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A COMPARATIVE ANALYSISOF THE RELATION BETWEENPOLITICAL TRUST AND FORMSOF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION INEUROPEMarc Hooghe a & Sofie Marien aa Department of Political Science, University ofLeuven, Leuven, BelgiumPublished online: 12 Jun 2012.

To cite this article: Marc Hooghe & Sofie Marien (2013): A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OFTHE RELATION BETWEEN POLITICAL TRUST AND FORMS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION INEUROPE, European Societies, 15:1, 131-152

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A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THERELATION BETWEEN POLITICALTRUST AND FORMS OF POLITICALPARTICIPATION IN EUROPE

Marc HoogheDepartment of Political Science, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Sofie MarienDepartment of Political Science, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

ABSTRACT: In the literature, two competing claims can be found on the

relationship between political trust and political participation. While some

authors argue that trust is a prerequisite for any form of participation to

occur, others claim that distrust can be a motivating factor for participation

in non-institutionalised forms of participation. The social movement literature

suggests that political trust will only have these behavioural consequences

if it is associated with sufficiently high levels of political efficacy. In thisarticle, we rely on the results of the 2006 European Social Survey for an

in-depth analysis of the relationship between political trust and participation

in 25 countries. The multilevel regression shows that while political trust is

positively associated with institutionalised participation, it is negatively

associated with non-institutionalised participation. Moreover, the effect

of political trust on institutionalised participation is dependent on self-

confidence about one’s capability to understand politics.

Key words: political participation; political trust; European Social Survey

1. Introduction

Does it make sense to participate in political life, if one does not trust the

political system or political decision-makers? This is one of the perennial

questions in political sociology, from the moment on a systematic decline

in political trust was first documented in the late 1960s (Levi and Stoker

2000). As Citrin (1974: 980) already argued:

The standard hypothesis, of course, is that political disaffection (cynicism,

alienation) is associated with a rejection of conventional or ‘‘conformist’’

– 2013 Taylor & Francis 131

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models of political participation (. . .) the politically cynical should be more

likely than those who trust the government either to withdraw from political

activity altogether or to engage in noncustomer, sometimes illegal, activities

such as participating in sit-ins or riots, or organizing for revolution.

In this quote, the words ‘either/or’ � italicised in the original text �are of crucial importance. If low levels of political trust would be

associated with low participation levels, one could argue that this

phenomenon poses a threat to the stability of the political system,

as we can assume that participation is a key characteristic of stable

democratic political systems (Barber 1984). If, on the other hand,

institutionalised participation would merely be replaced by non-

institutionalised forms of participation, this implies that political systems

will have to adapt to new forms of interaction with the population

(Inglehart and Welzel 2005; Rosanvallon 2008). It is therefore of crucial

importance to determine whether low levels of political trust are

associated with a complete withdrawal from political life, or whether

this ‘only’ leads to a change in the political participation repertoires

being used by distrusting citizens. In this article, we want to investigate

whether political trust is indeed a necessary resource for political

participation.The relations under investigation are inherently complex. It can be

assumed that political trust has a positive impact on some forms of

participation, but not on others. Furthermore, we know that political

mobilisation processes are the result of a complicated interplay between

various elements: issue salience, mobilisation efforts, socio-economic

status, civic skills, interest, motivation, political opportunity, political

trust and political competence and awareness (Verba et al. 1995). From

this perspective, political trust can still be considered as an essential

prerequisite for political participation to occur, but it should not be

considered as a sufficient prerequisite: political trust can only be

expected to have a positive effect on participation levels if it is combined

with other civic resources. While there is a general consensus that both

political trust and efficacy are important resources for participation, there

is disagreement on the nature of this relationship: are the effects of

political trust and efficacy on political participation simply additive or are

both attitudes required? Some authors state that political trust and

efficacy are two essential prerequisites and only their joint presence will

trigger political action (Gamson 1968; Fraser 1970). Empirical studies

testing this theoretical expectation yielded mixed results and the

interplay between both attitudes has not yet been tested in a large

cross-national study.

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In this article, we propose to build on prior research not just by usingnew comparative data and carefully constructed measurements, but also bypaying attention to the occurrence of interaction effects between politicaltrust and elements of political efficacy. In this article we first review thetheoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between politicaltrust and political participation, before we move on with our own analysison the relationship between political trust, institutionalised participation,non-institutionalised participation and voting.

2. Theory

The alleged decline in political trust in some Western societies has led toan intensive debate on the future of political participation (Hetherington1998). Basically, two different claims can be distinguished. On the onehand, a number of authors assume that citizens need a basic form of trustin the political process before they will embark on various forms ofpolitical participation. On the other hand, a number of authors have madethe claim that a lack of political trust means that citizens will abandonelite-directed forms of participation, in favour of elite-challengingparticipation acts (Levi and Stoker 2000).

The first, and oldest line of reasoning, assumes that citizens requirepolitical trust in order to participate in politics. Almond and Verba (1963:27) already stated that in order to become a participant in politics, citizensneed positive orientations towards the political system. Negative attitudestowards or negative judgements of the political system lead to alienationwhich erodes the effectiveness and the legitimacy of the democratic systemand will lead to democratic instability over time (Almond and Verba 1963:22, 230).

The second claim made in the literature, however, states that distrustcan also serve as a resource and a motivating factor for politicalparticipation. When political decision makers or the political system asa whole are perceived as untrustworthy, citizens will feel compelled tointervene. In this respect Barnes and Kaase (1979: 409�77) introduced acrucial distinction between conventional and unconventional participa-tion. They state that while ‘conventional participation is a manifestation ofsupport for the political order (. . .). The presence of dissent in democraticsocieties is often indicated by unconventional modes of action’ (Barnesand Kaase 1979: 444). It has to be noted that by now much of theseoriginally unconventional modes of participation have become largelyconventional. In line with the more recent literature we will opt for adistinction between institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms ofpolitical participation. While institutionalised participation refers to all

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acts directly related to the institutional process (campaign activity,contacting elected officials, . . .), non-institutionalised forms have no directrelation with the electoral process or the functioning of the politicalinstitutions (Kingemann and Fuchs 1995). The literature allows us toexpect that distrusting citizens are more likely to engage in non-institutionalised forms of political participation which are often rathergoal-oriented, issue specific and situated outside the institutions of thepolitical system.

Norris (1999) elaborates on this assertion by claiming that a morecritical outlook of citizens towards the political system should not beregarded as a symptom of alienation from the political system. Rather, therise of a new generation of ‘critical citizens’ will lead to an increase in elite-challenging forms of political participation. Rosanvallon (2008) takes theargument a step further by arguing that distrust is one of the keyexpectations in most liberal constitutional frameworks. Citizens are notexpected to place a blind trust in political authorities, but they aresupposed to practice a critical scrutiny towards the actions of politiciansand institutions. According to Rosanvallon, the vigilant citizen activelymonitors the acts of politicians and decision-makers. A more radical standis taken by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2001: 5) who claim that distrustnot only stimulates non-institutionalised ways of political participation butrather all kinds of engagement as ‘People often view their politicalinvolvement as medicine they must take in order to keep the disease ofgreedy politicians and special interests from getting further out of hand’.This claim about the motivating role of distrust is well founded in some ofthe older literature on social movement participation. Already in 1968,Gamson argued that ‘high trust in authorities implies some lack ofnecessity for influencing them’ (Gamson 1968: 46�7). Within socialmovement theory, especially proponents of the grievance theory haveclaimed already quite early on that without major grievances towards thepolitical system, there is no need to become politically active (Craig andMaggiotto 1981). Based on these insights, one can therefore assume thatthe relation between political trust and political participation will dependon the exact nature of the participation act. Following the traditional logicof the Almond and Verba approach one can expect that political trust willlead to a more intensive form of participation in conventional, orinstitutionalised forms of participation:

H1: Political trust will be positively associated with institutionalised political

participation.

The more critical approach preferred by authors like Rosanvallon andNorris, on the other hand, allows us to assume that distrust toward the

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political system can be a strong motivating factor for elite-challenging andnon-institutionalised participation:

H2: Political trust will be negatively associated with non-institutionalised

political participation

It is clear, however, that the impact of political trust on participationshould not be studied in an isolated manner (Kriesi and Westholm 2007).The Civic Voluntarism Model � as developed by Verba, Schlozman andBrady (1995) � emphasises the importance of resources for politicalparticipation. A major resource enabling political participation is politicalefficacy, i.e., ‘the feeling that individual political action does have or canhave an impact upon the political process’ (Campbell et al. 1954: 187).Political efficacy has been studied extensively since the 1950s and itspositive effect on political participation is well-established in empiricalresearch (Campbell et al. 1954; Abramson 1983; Bennett 1986; Rosenstoneand Hansen 1993; Verba et al. 1995; Anderson 2010). A distinction hasbeen made between internal and external political efficacy. Internalefficacy indicates a person’s assessment of his or her capabilities to takepart in the political process whereas external efficacy indicates a person’sassessment of the responsiveness of the political system (Niemi et al. 1991;Anderson 2000).

Several authors have argued that especially the combined presence ofinternal efficacy and political trust functions as an ideal breeding groundfor political action. Within the Civic Voluntarism Model, both attitudesare believed to have a positive effect on participation, and their effects areconsidered as being additive. However, other scholars have argued thatboth attitudes are needed and that only their joint presence will lead toparticipation: trust and efficacy thus are both treated as necessary butinsufficient conditions for political participation. Already Almond andVerba (1963) considered the development of a sense of politicalcompetence and positive orientations towards the political system amongthe citizenry as two essential prerequisites for the occurrence of aparticipant political culture. Self-evidently, the reverse argument can bemade too: alienation is thus defined as the combination of politicalpowerlessness (i.e., the absence of political efficacy) and the presence ofdistrust among citizens (Miller 1974).

The theoretical approach introduced by Gamson (1968) is especiallyrelevant in this regard. Gamson (1968) hypothesises that a combinationof distrust and internal efficacy triggers political action. One’s level ofpolitical trust is irrelevant, if one does not feel capable to participate.Conversely, one’s level of internal efficacy is irrelevant for politicalparticipation if one does not feel the need to intervene on specific policy

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issues (Gamson 1968; Fraser 1970). Therefore, ‘a combination of highsense of political [internal] efficacy and low political trust is the optimumcombination for mobilization-a belief that influence is both possible andnecessary’ (Gamson 1968: 48). Some scholars have argued that Gamson’stheory should be modified as, they claim, the joint presence of distrust andinternal efficacy only fosters participation outside of the conventionalarenas, while one should not expect this combination to have an effect onconventional forms of participation (Hawkins et al. 1971: 1135; Muller1977). These observations reinforce the claim that participation is theresult of an interaction between political (dis)trust and political efficacy.This would imply that the behavioural consequences of political trustcannot be studied in an isolated manner, as has been done in most of theavailable research thus far. Following the idea of Gamson therefore allowsus to assume that the impact of political trust on participation levels is alsodependent on the level of the feeling of political awareness:

H3: The effect of political (dis)trust on political participation is dependent

on the interaction with a feeling of political awareness.

3. Prior results on the relation between political trust and participation

The currently available empirical research does not provide us with a clearand unequivocal answer to the questions posed in this theoretical debate.Most studies focus on the United States using the ‘trust in government’ �measurement from the American National Election Studies (NES) and thisline of research did not find any consistent relationship between politicaltrust and political participation. A specific problem when using the NESstudy, however, is that the questions on political trust used in this surveyhave been heavily criticised on methodological grounds (Citrin 1974;Seligson 1983; Muller and Jukam 1983; Craig et al. 1990). It has beenargued that the NES-questions measure the confidence in the incumbentadministration, rather than to tap diffuse support for the political systemas was suggested in the classic study by Easton (1965).

Most comparative surveys rely on a different measurement battery that isexpected to tap in a more valid manner the level of trust respondents havein basic political institutions, such as parliament, government, the legalbranch of government or various international organisations. When usingthis operationalisation of diffuse support for the political system, a differentpicture emerges. Dalton reported a positive correlation between politicaltrust and voter turnout in 12 advanced industrial democracies (Dalton2004: 171�6). Single-nation studies in the UK and Canada found similarresults (Pattie and Johnston 2001: 215; Belanger and Nadeau 2005: 44).

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Analyses of the 1995�1997 World Values Survey data also reveal positivecorrelations between trust in political institutions and party activity (Norris1999: 257�61; Dalton 2004: 173�6). Most of the available research,therefore, tends to support hypothesis 1.

When turning to non-institutionalised forms of political participation,Kaase (1999) found a negative relation between trust in politicalinstitutions and protest participation using the 1981�1996 World Valuessurvey data in nine countries. With regard to demonstrating, Heath (2008)analysed 23 monthly general population surveys (2000�2002) in the UK.The results of this analysis reveal that people who are dissatisfied with theworking of democracy are generally more willing to protest than peoplewho are satisfied. While there is some support for hypothesis 2, theevidence thus far remains clearly limited.

Following the publication of Gamson’s Power and Discontent (1968) theprediction that both distrust and efficacy are necessary prerequisites forparticipation to occur was subjected to scrutiny in several studies. Mostof the early studies did not find any evidence for the beneficial effects ofthe presence of political trust and internal efficacy on participation(Fraser 1970; Hawkins et al. 1971). However, studies focusing onparticipation outside the conventional arena (such as riots and demon-strations) confirmed the occurrence of this interaction effect: the jointpresence of distrust and internal efficacy was found to trigger‘unconventional’ participation (Paige 1971; Citrin 1977; Muller 1977;Guterbock and London 1983). More recent research on this topic isscarce as most of the empirical work can be situated in the 1970s and1980s. Moreover, these studies are based on single-nation studies with aclear focus on the United States. On this account, Belanger and Nadeau(2005: 137) note:

Our results also challenge the major conclusion reached in American studies

that show no relation between political trust and electoral participation. (. . .)

This conclusion further stresses the need to offset the United States bias in the

literature on political trust.

There is, therefore, not much recent evidence with regard to the thirdhypothesis we want to test in the current article.

4. Data and methods

In order to assess the relation between political trust and politicalparticipation, we need access to a dataset that includes a comprehensiveand reliable measurement of both variables. The third wave of the

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European Social Survey (2006) provides extensive and up-to-dateinformation on trust in institutions, participation and various politicalattitudes (Jowell and the Central Coordinating Team 2007). Theadvantage of using this cross-country dataset is that we can be confidentthat any results we might find are not dependent on specific characteristicsof one country or one political system. As we know there are largecountry-level differences between participation levels, it is clear thatfindings from a single country cannot be generalised toward Westernsocieties. As open democratic governance structures tend to be associatedwith high levels of political participation, it is important to controlfor basic elements of the political system in order to study politicalparticipation levels, as was already noted by Jennings (1990). Comparativedata, therefore allow us more certainty that any results we might find arenot due to specific country-level characteristics. Data were collected in2006�2007 by means of face-to-face interviews among representativesamples of the population of 25 European countries.1 Response ratesvaried by country with a median of 63.4%.

4.1. Dependent variable: Political participation

The European Social Survey (2006) provides an extensive list of politicalactivities in which respondents can participate. Institutionalised forms ofparticipation include party membership, working in a political party oraction group at least once during the last year and contacting governmentofficials at least once during the last year.2 Furthermore, respondents werealso asked whether they had voted during the last national election, andgiven the very specific characteristics and distribution of this participationact, we decided to analyse it separately. By doing so, we are in line withmost of the political participation literature. Voting remains by far themost widespread form of political participation. Contrary to other formsof participation, voting is legally limited in use to one vote for everyperson and in some countries, voting is compulsory (e.g., Belgium). Non-institutionalised forms of participation, on the other hand, include having

1. Countries included are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia,

Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway,

Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain,

Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

2. The item on working in a political party or action group might be rather ambiguous in

its formulation. This item, however, correlates strongly with party membership, and

therefore we assume that this item refers mainly to active involvement in political

parties and other forms of institutionalised engagement.

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signed a petition, boycotted products, and having taken part in ademonstration.3

Our distinction between institutionalised and non-instititutionalisedforms of participation closely follows the framework already set out byBarnes and Kaase (1979). Institutionalised forms of participation aredefined and organised by members of the political elite (most notablypolitical parties), while non-institutionalised forms of participation inpractice are being used predominantly by non-elite actors, in order tochallenge the political elite or to gain access to the political agenda(Inglehart 1997). This distinction is in line with the literature in thisregard (e.g., Inglehart and Catterberg 2002; Dalton 2008; Marien et al.2010) and it is also empirically valid as a confirmatory factor analysisdemonstrates these are distinct dimensions.

To summarise, we have three dependent variables: institutionalisedparticipation, non-institutionalised activities and voting. All threedependent variables are categorical with a value 0 �not done and a value1 �done.

4.2. Independent variables

The main independent variable is political trust. We operationalise diffusepolitical trust by measuring trust in the most important institutions of apolitical system (Muller and Jukam 1983). The question on political trustwas phrased: ‘please tell me on a score of 0 to 10 how much you personallytrust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust aninstitution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust’. The institutionsinclude: the national parliament, politicians, political parties, the legalsystem and the police. A principal component analysis indicated that theitems load strongly on a single dimension, explaining over half of the totalvariance with an Eigenvalue of 3.55 and Cronbach’s a of 0.89 (Table 1).4

As already argued, political efficacy too can be considered as animportant determinant of political participation. Niemi et al. (1991: 1407)note that political efficacy has two components, as it refers to the self-perceived ability to understand politics and to participate in an effectivemanner. Unfortunately, the ESS questionnaire did not include a full

3. Boycotting products and services for political and ideological reasons is considered as

a hallmark of political consumerism, that is now generally regard as a non-

institutionalised form of political participation. Stolle et al. (2005) offer empirical

evidence for the claim that political consumerism can be considered as an integral part

of contemporary political participation repertoires.

4. The one-factor solution is preferred given the fact that only one factor emerged with

an Eigenvalue over 1.0.

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measurement of internal political efficacy, but only includes two questionson the cognitive awareness with regard to politics. Based on the statisticalmaterial presented by Niemi et al. (1991) it can be assumed that thiscognitive awareness will be closely associated with the efficacy with regardto participation, but given the fact that the ESS dataset does not includeany information on this matter, for the time being we refer to these twovariables as a form of political awareness.

The following two items were used: ‘How often does politics seem socomplicated that you can’t really understand what is going on?’ and ‘Howdifficult or easy do you find it to make your mind up about politicalissues?’ Both questions tap the feeling that the individual is powerless tounderstand politics. These variables are correlated (Pearson’s correlation:0.466) and correspond to one underlying factor.

In our analysis, we also include various control variables. Previousresearch has indicated that education, gender, age, ethnicity and religionare, to varying extents, related to levels or types of political participation(Verba et al. 1995; Van Deth and Elff 2004; Desposato and Norrander2008; Marien et al. 2010). We included level of education, age, gender,citizenship status and church practice as background variables. Age, levelof education and church practice are coded as continuous variables,whereas gender and citizenship status are coded as dichotomy variables(with respectively women �0 and men �1; not a citizen of thecountry �0 and citizen of the country �1; see the Appendix for questionwording).

Further, we will control for social capital that is often assumed toinfluence political participation (Hooghe 2003). Based on the literature,we think it is safe to include two elements commonly included in the socialcapital literature as control variables: generalised trust and networks(Newton 2007). We can assume that trusting people are more likely toengage in collective action. In the ESS, generalised trust was includedwith three standard questions that strongly correlate and correspond to

TABLE 1. Principal component analysis for political trust items

Trust in . . . Loadings

Country’s parliament 0.867The legal system 0.825The police 0.757Politicians 0.887Political parties 0.868Eigenvalue 3.55Percentage explained variance 70.91

Note: Results of a principal component analysis on full ESS 2006 sample. (43,733 individuals in

25 countries)

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one factor (with 69.5% explained variance and an Eigenvalue of 2.09).Further, people can be mobilised through networks. Especially, tradeunions often mobilise citizens for political action. Therefore, respondentswere asked whether they were member of a trade union or a similarorganisation. Informal networks were measured by asking respondents:‘How often do you socially meet with friends, relatives or colleagues?’Finally, political participation levels tend to be lower in less establisheddemocracies (Kostadinova and Power 2007). Some of the more recentdemocracies in Central and Eastern Europe still struggle to establish awell-functioning democratic political system. In order to take this effectinto account, a composite index of good governance was included in theanalyses. This index, developed by the World Bank, is based on expert andcitizen surveys and is meant to tap the effective functioning ofgovernment institutions within a country. The index summarisesinformation on a country with several measures including voice andaccountability, upholding the rule of law, fighting corruption, governmenteffectiveness, regulatory quality and offering political stability (Kaufmannet al. 2008).

Given that we are interested in three dependent variables (institutio-nalised participation, non-institutionalised participation and voting), weperformed three regression analyses. Because all dependent variables arecoded as dichotomous variables, we used logistic regressions techniques.Moreover, it is a reasonable expectation that the scores of respondentssampled in the same country will tend to resemble one another, andthis nested structure of the data can bias the standard errors which resultsin spurious significant results. Multilevel analysis allows taking thisintra class-correlation and the variance between countries into account(Hox 2002).

5. Results

First we explain the occurrence of institutionalised participation (Table 2).The null-model demonstrates that 5% of the variation can be situated atthe country level. In Model I, all independent variables are included. Inline with hypothesis 1, we can observe that political trust is positivelyrelated to participation in institutionalised participation. The results showthat men, highly educated and older citizens participate more often inthis form of political action. Political awareness, too, proves to have asignificant and very strong effect on institutionalised participation.Further, union membership and integration in informal networks boostinstitutionalised participation. As expected, participation is higher incountries that have higher values on the good governance index. In this

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model, approximately 2% of the variance between the countries isexplained.5 Following hypothesis 3, in Model II we allow for aninteraction effect between political awareness and political trust. Thisinteraction effect proves to be significant suggesting that a combination ofpolitical trust and confidence in the ability to understand politics is highlyconducive for institutionalised political participation.

Second, we explain the occurrence of non-institutionalised participa-tion and here we proceed in a similar manner (Table 3). The null-modelshows that 22% of the variation in the dataset can be situated at thecountry level. In Model III, all independent variables are included. In linewith hypothesis 2, we can observe a negative relation between politicaltrust and non-institutionalised participation. Furthermore, contrary toinstitutionalised participation, women and younger people participatemore often in non-institutionalised than men and older people. Educationhowever remains an important source of inequality in participation.Also for non-institutionalised participation, political awareness plays an

TABLE 2. Multilevel regression explaining institutionalised participation

MODEL I MODEL II

Coefficient S.E. Coefficient S.E.

Political trust 0.043*** 0.008 0.032*** 0.008Political awareness 0.355*** 0.016 0.353*** 0.016Education 0.261*** 0.015 0.262*** 0.015Gender (Male �1) 0.220*** 0.027 0.217*** 0.027Age 0.010*** 0.001 0.010*** 0.001Citizen status 0.515*** 0.084 0.511*** 0.084Church practice 0.116*** 0.010 0.117*** 0.010Generalised trust �0.024** 0.008 �0.023* 0.008Union membership 0.272*** 0.033 0.272*** 0.033Informal networks 0.194*** 0.017 0.195*** 0.017Good governance (country level) 0.298** 0.093 0.301** 0.093Political trust * political awareness 0.028*** 0.007Intercept �2.756*** 0.109 �2.754*** 0.109Intra-Class Correlation (%) 2.80% 2.80%Between country error variance 0.094 0.028 0.094 0.028

Source: ESS (2006). N �40,222 individuals in 25 countries. Notes: Results of logistic multilevel

analyses. Method of estimation: PQL. The variables were centred. Variance at country

level �5.48% in null-model. Sign.: *p B0.05; **p B0.01; ***p B0.001. Only ‘good

governance’ added as country-level variable, all other variables individual level.

5. This percentage is the estimated Intra-Class Correlation (ICC) which is computed by

dividing the ‘between country error variance’ by the ‘total error variance’ and

multiplying this by 100 (in the case of logistic regression the total error variance can

be computed by adding the country error variance with p2/3 (See Snijders and

Bosker 1999: 224).

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important role: the probability that a woman with the lowest level of

political awareness will participate is 0.49, while this is 0.77 for a woman

with the highest level of political awareness (holding all other variables

constant at their mean). Also social capital proves to be important given

that generalised trust, union membership and informal networks all

positively contribute to non-institutionalised participation.Similar to institutionalised participation, non-institutionalised partici-

pation is substantially higher in countries with higher values on the good

governance index. The interaction between political trust and political

awareness, entered in Model IV does not reach statistical significance.

This finding contradicts the earlier studies on this interaction effect

(Paige 1971; Citrin 1977; Muller 1977; Guterbock and London 1983). In

these 25 societies, a combination of political trust and political awareness

does not increase the likelihood to engage in non-institutionalised activity.In the third analysis, we examine citizens’ turnout during elections.

Therefore, we conduct our analysis on the electorate and eliminated

respondents who were not eligible to vote due to their age or citizenship

status (Table 4). Again, we start with a null-model, demonstrating that

12.4% of the variation in the dataset can be situated at the country level.

Model V shows that trusting citizens turn out more often. Furthermore,

highly educated respondents and older citizens are more likely to vote.

TABLE 3. Multilevel regression explaining non-institutionalised participation

MODEL III MODEL IV

Coefficients S.E. Coefficients S.E.

Political trust �0.047*** 0.007 �0.045*** 0.008Political awareness 0.305*** 0.015 0.306*** 0.015Education 0.367*** 0.014 0.367*** 0.014Gender (Male �1) �0.223*** 0.025 �0.222*** 0.025Age �0.008*** 0.001 �0.008*** 0.001Citizen status 0.542*** 0.070 0.544*** 0.070Church practice 0.019* 0.010 0.019 0.010Generalised trust 0.029*** 0.008 0.029*** 0.008Union membership 0.370*** 0.031 0.370*** 0.031Informal networks 0.116*** 0.016 0.116*** 0.016Good governance (country level) 1.114*** 0.181 1.115*** 0.181Political trust * political awareness �0.011 0.006Intercept �2.359*** 0.144 �2.361*** 0.254Intra-Class Correlation (%) 10.19% 10.24%Between country error variance 0.370 0.106 0.372 0.107

Source: ESS (2006). N �40,086 in 25 countries. Notes: Results of logistic multilevel analyses

(PQL estimation). The variables were centred. Variance at country level �22.08% in null-model.

Sign.: *p B0.05; **p B0.01; ***p B0.001. Only ‘good governance’ added as country-level

variable, all other variables individual level.

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Church practice and social capital increase the likelihood to vote. Also forvoting, political awareness proves to be important. We can observe,however, that in this case the good governance indicator does not help usto explain the observed differences between countries. Similar to otherforms of institutionalised participation, there is a positive interactioneffect between political trust and political awareness (Model VI),suggesting that both attitudes motivate voting and that a combinationof political trust and awareness boosts voter participation even morestrongly.

The results reported in the previous tables were obtained using thefull ESS sample. We can thus be confident that the findings are notdependent on the characteristics of specific country settings. In order totest for the robustness of the results, we also conducted the analysiscountry by country. In a large majority of cases, the same patterns werefound, although conventional standards of significance were notalways reached, due to smaller sample sizes. The relations did prove tobe most meaningful in the more established democracies, while theywere more volatile in some of the more recent democracies in Centraland Eastern Europe. This might suggest that the pattern we describein the analysis might be mostly applicable to established democracies,but this is something that should be investigated more in depth infuture research.

TABLE 4. Logistic multilevel regression explaining voting

MODEL V MODEL VI

Coefficients S.E. Coefficients S.E.

Political trust 0.156*** 0.008 0.160*** 0.009Political awareness 0.290*** 0.017 0.328*** 0.018Education 0.297*** 0.017 0.296*** 0.017Gender (Male �1) �0.045 0.030 �0.050 0.030Age 0.030*** 0.001 0.029*** 0.001Church practice 0.168*** 0.012 0.169*** 0.012Generalised trust 0.048*** 0.008 0.049*** 0.008Union membership 0.461*** 0.044 0.463*** 0.044Informal networks 0.070*** 0.017 0.071 *** 0.017Good governance (country level) 0.043 0.186 0.045 0.185Political trust * political awareness 0.046*** 0.007Intercept 0.795*** 0.132 0.798*** 0.131Intra-Class Correlation (%) 10.76% 10.63%Between country error variance 0.393 0.113 0.388 0.112

Source: ESS (2006). N �36,518 individuals in 25 countries. Notes: Results of logistic multilevel

analyses (PQL estimation). The variables were centred. Variance at country level �12.36% in

null-model. Sign.: *p B0.05; **p B0.01; ***p B0.001. Only ‘good governance’ added as

country-level variable, all other variables individual level.

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6. Discussion

In the literature, competing claims have been put forward with regard tothe relation between political trust and various forms of politicalparticipation. While some authors claim that political trust is aprerequisite for any form of political participation to occur, others assumethat a lack of trust can lead to a more intensive form of citizens’participation. In this article, we report on a comprehensive analysis of thisrelation, using the results of the 2006 European Social Survey. The datathat are available in this survey allow us to formulate an answer to thequestion Citrin already posed 37 years ago: will low levels of political trustbe associated with less participation, or rather with different patterns ofparticipation? The evidence presented in this article suggests that thelatter option is the case: while citizens with high levels of political trust aremore likely to engage in institutionalised forms of political participation(thus confirming hypothesis 1), political trust is negatively associated withparticipation in non-institutionalised forms (confirming hypothesis 2).For voting, a positive relation with political trust could be observed. Ourfirst two hypotheses are thus clearly confirmed: political trust seems toboost institutionalised participation and voting in particular but reducesnon-institutionalised participation. It has to be acknowledged, however,that the results of the analysis were strongest for the act of voting and thislends some support to the hypothesis that the decline of political trustcould be regarded as an important causal factor for the observed decline invoter turnout in a number of liberal democracies. Whether the loss invoter turnout can be compensated by a simultaneous rise in non-institutionalised participation as a method for citizens to gain politicalinfluence is a question that falls beyond the scope of the current article.

Self-confidence about one’s capability to understand politics alsoproved to have a strong effect on all forms of political participation. In1968, William Gamson stated that a combination of distrust and highefficacy would serve as an ideal breeding ground for political action.Partly, the current analysis confirms the notion that both variables areimportant and interact with one another. The interaction effects, however,are different than Gamson would have assumed. For institutionalisedparticipation and voting the analysis revealed that a combination of trustand awareness leads to high participation figures. For this kind ofparticipation repertoire, we can indeed conclude that an interaction occursbetween both resources for participation, thus confirming hypothesis 3.This implies that participation levels will be highest among those thattrust the system and also have confidence in their own way capability tounderstand the political system. But while distrust and awareness, on theirown, are related to non-institutionalised participation, for this kind of

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participation we did not observe any significant interaction effect �contrary to Gamson’s predictions and hypothesis 3. Distrusting citizensare more likely to engage in non-institutionalised politics but theirparticipation levels do not receive a stronger boost from their capability tounderstand politics than is the case among trusting citizens. However, thefindings of this study are limited to one element of internal efficacy, theconfidence in one’s ability to understand politics. Data limitations did notallow us to investigate the effect of a second element of internal efficacy,the belief in one’s own capability to participate.

The result of the analysis is that institutionalised participation and votingare rather straightforward to predict. Those who trust the system and feelcapable to understand it, opt for this kind of participation repertoire, andthey do so even more intensively if both feelings are present simultaneously.For non-institutionalised participation, on the other hand, the imageremains less clear. Those who distrust the system indeed more often jointhese kinds of action, but this effect is not moderated by the feeling ofpolitical awareness. This might suggest that political distrust might be astrong mobilising force across society, and that it is not dependent on thecapability of citizens to actually understand politics. While Gamson in the1960s quite strongly argued that protest should be seen as an instrumentalway of changing society and the political system, the current analysis suggestthat non-institutionalised participation is less strongly dependent on one’sability to understand political life. As such, it seems less strongly correlatedto the explicit goal of bringing about changes in the political system thanmore institutionalised forms of political participation. To ascertain whetherthis is indeed the cause for the changes we detected in this analysis, however,needs to be further investigated. The fact that these are only European datalimits the variance with regard to country-level variables, so it would beextremely interesting to investigate this relation using a most different casedesign, also including countries with closed political systems.

The analysis strongly supports the idea that low levels of political trustshould not be equated with low across the board levels of citizenparticipation and maybe even on the contrary: distrusting citizens aremore likely to participate in a whole range of political activities. Thecurrent analysis therefore seems to strengthen the claim put forward byNorris, Rosanvallon and other authors: low levels of political trust do notimply an alienation from the political system as such, but rather indicate astructural trend towards different forms of interaction between citizensand the political system. This does not imply, self-evidently, that thistrend towards new forms of citizen-state interaction could not entail newproblems. To start with, we do not know how effective these forms of non-institutionalised politics actually are. While it might be worthwhile thatcitizens participate in demonstrations and boycott products for political

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reasons, we do not know yet how effective these forms of participation are.

There is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that demonstrations might

have changed the nature of political decision-making (Deneckere 1993;

Tilly 2008), but currently there is no research available demonstrating that

on a routine basis too this might be considered as an effective form of

input into the political decision-making process. The transition towards

new interaction patterns between citizens and the political system

inevitably creates a number of uncertainties: we know what we lose (i.e.,

the quasi general character of voting) but we do not know yet whether the

emerging alternatives are really effective in ensuring that the view of

citizens get represented in the political decision-making process.

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Notes on contributors

Marc Hooghe is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Leuven

(Belgium) and a Visiting professor at the University of Mannheim

(Germany). He holds an ERC Advanced Grant to investigate the changing

linkage between citizens and the state.

Sofie Marien is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven, where

she holds an FWO-fellowship. She has published mainly on political trust.

Address for correspondence: Professor Marc Hooghe, Department of Political

Science, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

E-mail: marc.hooghe@soc.kuleuven.be

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Appendix

Questions wording

Political Participation‘During the last 12 months, have you (. . .)

. . . contacted a politician, government or local government official?

. . .worked in a political party or action group?

. . . signed a petition?

. . . taken part in a lawful public demonstration?

. . . boycotted certain products?

‘Are you a member of any political party?’ (Yes/No)‘Did you vote in the last national election?’ (Yes/No/Not eligible to

vote)

Political Trust‘Please tell me on a score of 0�10 how much you personally trust each

of the institutions.’

. . . [country]’s parliament?

. . . the legal system?

. . . the police?

. . . politicians?

. . . political parties?

Descriptive statistics

N Min. Max. Mean SD

Institutionalised participation (dummy) 46,660 0 1 0.18 0.38Non-institutionalised participation (dummy) 46,522 0 1 0.28 0.45Vote 42,391 0 3 0.78 0.41Institutionalised participation 46,660 0 3 0.23 0.56Non-institutionalised participation 46,522 0 3 0.39 0.70Political trust 43,733 0 10 4.39 2.13Education level 46,878 0 3 1.79 1.06Gender (1 �Male) 46.999 0 1 0.45 0.50Religiousness 46,656 0 4 1.57 1.42Age (in years) 46,752 14 101 47.40 18.61Citizenship status 47,068 0 1 0.96 0.19Political Awareness 44,849 1 5 2.92 0.93Generalised trust 46,094 0 10 5.08 2.03Member of trade union or similar organisation 46,663 0 1 0.19 0.39Informal networks 46,783 0 3 1.71 0.89Interaction political trust * political awareness 42,263 0 50 13.31 8.12

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Background variables‘What is the highest level of education you have achieved?’0: Primary1: Lower secondary2: Upper secondary3: Post secondary

‘Apart from special occasions such as weddings and funerals, about howoften do you attend religious services?’

0 Never1 Less often2 Only on special holy days3 At least once a month4 Once a week or more

‘Are you a citizen of [country]?’ (Yes/No)

Political awareness‘How often does politics seem so complicated that you can’t really

understand what is going on?’‘How difficult or easy do you find it to make your mind up about

political issues?’

Generalised Trust (3 items)‘Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or

that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?’‘Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if

they got the chance, or would they try to be fair?’‘Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that

they are mostly looking out for themselves?’

Networks‘Are you or have you ever been a member of a trade union or similar

organisation?‘How often do you socially meet with friends, relatives or colleagues?

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