Healthy or harmful distrust? On the democratic relevance of political scepticism over blind (dis)trust

ongoing

Paradoxically, representative democracy requires not only citizens’ trust in the institutions of democracy, but also a healthy dose of political scepticism towards these institutions. Scholars have warned against the detrimental effects of blind trust and blind distrust. The former would make citizens susceptible to manipulation, the latter to alienation. By contrast, (dis)trust that is not blind but evaluative stimulates vigilant civic engagement. While blind (dis)trust would lead to an anomic democracy, evaluative (dis)trust would stimulate democratic reinvigoration and accountability. We should therefore not merely distinguish between political trust and distrust, but also between dispositional/blind and evaluative (dis)trust. However, empirical studies of political trust focus almost exclusively on the level of trust. The standard political trust survey items cannot distinguish blind (dis)trust from evaluative (dis)trust. This vast lacuna at the heart of political trust research left the major questions in the field unanswered: on the trends, causes, and consequences of political trust. CRITICALTRUST addresses this fundamental problem. It first develops a novel, two-dimensional model of political (dis)trust, and creates new measures that distinguish blind from evaluative (dis)trust. This model and these measures will be the foundation for primary data collection (large-N survey + experiments). The survey is designed as a three-wave, cross-national panel survey in 8 European countries: Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Both the survey’s panel element and the experiments allow us to systematically test causal effects that have long been proposed in the literature. CRITICALTRUST thereby answers questions that plagued political trust research for decades. It will offer diagnoses of the risks of low and declining trust, and advice to democratic actors whether and how to stimulate political trust.