Trust in Political and Nonpolitical Authorities in France

Abstract

At least within Western democracies, where coercion normally is less esteemed than cooperation, the level of popular trust in government is widely recognized to be an important clue to the effectiveness and probable stability of the political system.l According to the conventional wisdom, conflict and instability in the French political system are attributable, at least in part, to the pervasive mistrust which presumably characterizes social as well as political relationships in France.2 It seems intuitively plausible that French political mistrust is simply one facet of generalized mistrust in French culture. Hence, French society offers interesting terrain for testing the hypothesis that political trust is closely related to generalized social trust, i.e., that trusting and mistrusting are generalized orientations extending to both political and nonpolitical objects. That hypothesis has been sustained in some studies, not in others.3 Almost all of the relevant studies have been conducted with American samples. The present article seeks first to examine levels of trust in political authorities and institutions in France, both in the society as a whole, and in various subgroups; second, to compare trust in political authorities with trust in nonpolitical authorities at the societal level; and, third, to investigate relationships between social and political trust at the individual level. Political trust, which can be defined as confidence that government generally will do what is right, need not be unidimensional. It may vary by geographical level, from local to regional to national governments. Following David Easton, political trust (or support, in his terminology) may vary by level of generality within the nation, from the political community, to the regime, to the political authorities currently in office.4 At the authorities level, the dimensions of honesty, competence, and responsiveness are logically separable, as are officials in different branches of government. The Michigan election studies suggest, however, that, at least in the United States, trust in national government tends to be generalized. In these studies, responses to questions relating to the hon31