Institutions, crises, and political confidence in seven contemporary democracies. An elite–mass analysis

Abstract

There is ample consensus in the literature that institutional confidence by the public is needed in democracies and at the same time elites, particularly political elites, need to share this confidence in their guidance of state institutions, if political stability in established democracies and the consolidation of new democracies are desired. The research takes the form of a quantitative analysis based on the World Values Surveys and the elite surveys (parliamentarians) conducted in 2006 (before the financial crisis) and in 2012–2013 (post the crisis when apparently, the worst of the economic crunch had lessened up) in the 7 countries selected. We explore what lies at the base of political confidence in the selected countries. We investigate whether levels of confidence are more strongly based on political attitudes or more specifically influenced by economic attitudes. Countries from different continents, South Africa (Africa); Chile (Latin America); Germany and Sweden (Western Europe); South Korea (Asia); Poland (Eastern Europe); and Turkey (Eurasia) were included in the analysis. Political factors explain a high level of mainly confidence in state institutions, with different percentages of explained variance among the different countries. Capacity of the state to deal with the economy seems to worry elites more than the public. Elites, especially those in government, have in general, a higher level of confidence in state institutions compared to the public. Similarly, the elites also had a noticeable higher level of confidence in civil society than the public in 2006 and 2013 in the majority of the countries in the study.