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Pushing and Pulling: The Static and Dynamic Effects of Political Distrust on Support for Representative Democracy and
Tom W G van der Meer1, Lisa A Janssen2
1Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Political Behavior
|September 2, 2025
Summary
Political distrust pushes citizens away from representative democracy. Support for alternatives like direct democracy depends on individual political views, especially for those with high efficacy and populist leanings.
Area of Science:
- Political Science
- Comparative Politics
- Public Opinion
Background:
- Political distrust is often linked to demands for institutional change.
- Scholarly consensus is lacking on whether distrust drives citizens towards specific alternative governance models (direct democracy, technocracy, authoritarianism).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the micro-level relationship between political distrust and support for representative democracy versus alternative decision-making models.
- To determine if the appeal of alternative models is conditional on citizens' political efficacy and populist leanings.
- To differentiate the impact of persistent low trust versus declining trust.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of three-wave panel survey data from four European countries (UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal).
- Estimation of Random Effects Within Between (REWB) models to separate different trust dynamics.
- Testing the conditional effects of political efficacy and populist attitudes on support for change.
Main Results:
- Political distrust unconditionally decreases support for the status quo (representative democracy).
- Distrust does not uniformly increase support for any single alternative model.
- Political distrust most strongly promotes support for direct democracy, particularly among citizens with high political efficacy and populist orientations.
Conclusions:
- Distrust acts as a push factor from representative democracy but not a universal pull towards alternatives.
- The appeal of alternative governance models is contingent on individual political dispositions.
- Findings support the 'dissatisfied democrat' theory, where distrust fuels a desire for greater direct political influence.
Keywords:
AuthoritarianismDirect democracyPanel dataPolitical trustRepresentative democracyTechnocracyMore Related Videos
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