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

Description du projet

Une dose raisonnable de scepticisme est bonne pour la démocratie

Confiance et scepticisme. Tous deux sont indispensables au fonctionnement de la démocratie. La confiance aveugle et la méfiance aveugle y porteraient atteinte. Or, les études sur la confiance politique portent presque exclusivement sur le niveau de confiance. Le projet CRITICALTRUST, financé par le CER, élaborera un modèle bidimensionnel de (mé/con)fiance politique et créera de nouvelles mesures permettant de faire la distinction entre (mé/con)fiance aveugle et (mé/con)fiance évaluative. Le projet mènera une enquête par panel transnationale dans huit pays européens (Estonie, France, Allemagne, Hongrie, Pays-Bas, Portugal, Suède et Royaume-Uni). Les résultats feront la lumière sur les problèmes liés aux faibles niveaux de confiance politique et à leur déclin et fourniront des conseils sur la manière d’y remédier.

Objectif

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.