Trust In Parties Research Articles

Which Type of Trust Matters?: Interpersonal vs. Institutional vs. Political Trust

Although an increasing number of studies demonstrate the importance of trust in economic growth, they only focus on interpersonal trust. This paper considers various types of trust including interpersonal trust (i.e., trust in people), institutional trust (e.g., trust in the fair administration of justice, or trust in the protection of property rights), and political trust (e.g., trust in government or political parties), and investigates their impacts on growth. Using novel cross-country survey data, this paper finds that institutional trust is most robustly related to the economic growth in a cross-section of 46 countries. This paper also establishes a causal link from institutional trust to growth using panel data from those 46 countries. Hence, in contrast to the previous trust literature which focuses on trust in “people” as a “cultural feature,” this paper stresses trust in “institutions” as a “policy–dependent feature.”

Trust in third parties

Independent decision makers are appointed to promote trust by shielding investors from rent appropriation efforts of insiders. We conduct experiments to show how the appointment procedures for such third parties influence the trust of investors and the actual distributions of returns on investment. We find that when the third party is randomly assigned, investments significantly increase in response to positive returns on investment. Investments are similarly high when insiders select anonymous third parties. However, a simple one-sided reputation mechanism between the third party and the insider (but not the investor) diminishes trust and eliminates the benefits of a supposedly independent third party. In a second experiment we show that the trust of investors, evidenced by their investment level, surprisingly does not depend on whether the decision to delegate to an independent third party or not is taken by insiders themselves or exogenously imposed by a random device.

Does intra-party democracy affect levels of trust in parties? The cases of Belgium and Israel

Previous research has shown a steady decline of citizen’s political trust and growing skepticism towards key institutions of representative democracy. Political parties, which perform the crucial role of linking citizens to the political system, are in the eye of the storm: citizens are generally more distrusting towards parties than other social and political institutions. The relevant literature mentions that parties often implement intra-party democratization to remedy party distrust. This article examines whether democratic candidate selection processes actually affect party trust among voters. The analysis is based on the cases of Belgium and Israel, where politicians made a strong case for intra-party democracy in recent history. The results indicate that, while inclusive selectorates indeed increase trust levels, decentralization decreases trust towards parties in both countries.

Interpersonal Trust in Russian Society

This article examines the current state of interpersonal trust between Russians (“close circle” of relatives, friends, acquaintances, and the majority of people). The continuing high level of trust between loved ones can be explained by the significance of these singular relationships and shared experiences adapting to changing economic and political conditions. However, the low prevalence of generalized trust is evidence that people have negative expectations in relation to their fellow citizens. At the same time, there is a connection between trust and socio-demographic characteristics and the social well-being of Russians. The greater is the variety of resources that people have (income, education, residence in a large city), the more they trust their acquaintances and the less they trust the majority of people. Satisfaction with one’s own life and the situation in the country reinforces the latter. Overall, this upward trend in trust in various parties over the past 15 years shows that social relationships are gradually stabilizing and that the population is adapting to new life and work conditions.

Does direct democracy make for better citizens? A cautionary warning based on cross-country evidence

It has been shown that both formal existence and actual use of direct democratic institutions have effects on a number of variables such as fiscal policies, quality of governance but also economic growth. Further, it has been argued that direct democratic institutions would not only have an impact on policy outcomes but influence citizen participation and attitudes toward politics. For the first time, these conjectures are tested in a large cross-country sample here. Overall, we do not find strong effects and some of the significant correlations are rather small substantially. In contrast to previous studies, voter turnout is not higher when direct democracy is available or used. Further, and also in contrast to previous studies, citizens do not express a greater interest in politics in countries with direct democracy institutions. Finally, they display lower trust in government and parties but not in parliament. These results shed some doubt on the hope that direct democracy would make for better citizens.

Trust in school: a pathway to inhibit teacher burnout?

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to consider trust as an important relational source in schools by exploring whether trust lowers teacher burnout. The authors examine how trust relationships with different school parties such as the principal relate to distinct dimensions of teacher burnout. The authors further analyze whether school-level trust additionally influences burnout. In doing this, the authors account for other teacher and school characteristics.Design/methodology/approach– The authors use quantitative data gathered during the 2008-2009 school year from 673 teachers across 58 elementary schools in Flanders (i.e. the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium). Because teacher and school characteristics are simultaneously related to burnout, multilevel modeling is applied.Findings– Trust can act as a buffer against teacher burnout. Teachers’ trust in students demonstrates the strongest association with burnout compared to trust in principals or colleagues. Exploring relationships of trust in distinct school parties with different burnout dimensions yield interesting additional insights such as the specific importance of teacher-principal trust for teachers’ emotional exhaustion. Burnout is further an individual teacher matter to which school-level factors are mainly unrelated.Research limitations/implications– Principals fulfill an important role in inhibiting emotional exhaustion among teachers. They are advised to create a school atmosphere that is conducive for different kinds of trust relationships to develop. Actions to strengthen trust and inhibit teacher burnout are necessary, although further qualitative and longitudinal research is desirable.Originality/value– This paper offers a unique contribution by examining trust in different school parties as a relational buffer against teacher burnout. It indicates that principals can affect teacher burnout and prevent emotional exhaustion by nurturing trusting relationships in school.

The Life-Time of Tomorrow Party of Japan and Its Negative Impacts on the Anti-Nuclear Movements in Japan’s Politics

The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan on 11th March 2011 was unimaginably scary for the Japanese people and it was easily expected that Japan was going to abandon nuclear power with anti-nuclear political parties. Contrarily, Japan decided to maintain nuclear power with pro-nuclear political parties. This decision of Japan was influenced by the negative impacts brought by the Tomorrow Party of Japan (TPJ), the largest political party in the history of Japan which was established primarily to abandon nuclear power. The purpose of this paper is to look at the life-time of TPJ from 28th November to 27th December in 2012 and examine the negative impacts by TPJ on the anti-nuclear movements in Japan’s politics. The paper then discovers that the Japanese people came to lose trust in anti-nuclear political parties because they recognized, due to TPJ, that ‘anti-nuclear’ can be abused by politicians for elections, the characteristics of the ‘anti-nuclear’ village are not so different from those of the nuclear power village and the anti-nuclear party is an amateur without leaders. The paper finally concludes that it will take much time and efforts to regain a lost trust in anti-nuclear political parties.

PUBLIC TRUST AND PARTICIPATION DEPENDING ON ETHNICITY IN LATVIA

Low public trust in public power institutions is still an urgent problem among the Member States of the European Union. According to the latest Standard Eurobarometer 80 data, the trust continues decreasing. In Latvia trust indicators are also markedly low - 17% residents of Latvia trust in the national parliament, 21% - in the government, but the indicator of trust in political parties is explicitly critical - it constitutes only 6%. Since the Eurobarometer research only includes citizens' opinion, we can assume that the trust indicators are even lower.The population of Latvia consists of the Latvians, who are the titular nation - 59.6%, the Russians - 27% and other national minorities, for instance, the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians. The issue of the integration of the Russian speaking people has been topical in Latvia since the mid 90ties, however, as a result of the unsuccessful integration policy, there is still an alarming number of non-citizens in Latvia, which, according to the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs of Latvia data, in 2012 constituted 17% of the population of Latvia and which is the third highest indicator in the European Union.Democracy in Latvia can only function well when all residents of Latvia, regardless of their ethnicity, undertake the responsibility for their country and participate in the public and local government administration. Therefore this publication aims at researching whether the indicators of public trust and participation differ, depending on the ethnicity of residents in Latvia. The authors also wanted to find out whether the issue of ethnicity has vital importance with regard to the improvement of public trust and participation in Latvia.The research is based on the public opinion poll that was conducted by the authors and the Marketing and Public Opinion Research Centre (SKDS) in Latvia in July 2012. In order to elaborate the research design, a case study method has been used. The data analysis methods, such as the grouping of statistical data and their depiction in tables and document analysis, have been used.The research results show that the trust in national level institutions is affected by different factors, including the ethnicity issue. The acquired research data in correlation with the nationality structure in statistical regions acquired in 2011 Population Census process in Latvia, affirm already mentioned conclusion, than public power institutions in Latvia (data of the Central statistical Bureau of Latvia) are more positively evaluated by respondents in regions with most number of Latvians, i.e. Vidzeme region (87% Latvians), Kurzeme region (76% Latvians).DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.8.6870

Кризис многопартийности в России

The article states that multi-party system developed in Russia in the wake of radical reforms, has been in a constant state of crisis. Based on the data from representative sociological surveys it examines the signs and the main causes of the crisis, paying special attention to peculiarities of the modern transformation of multiparty system. The authors emphasize that the ongoing changes of party policy implemented “from the top” to optimize the party system, only hinder the creation of a truly competitive political parties and disorient people. Recent years have seen the low level of trust in political parties, lack of interest in their activities, weak linkages of large groups of population with traditional political institutions, the constant loosening of newly formed party loyalties. Compared to modern democratic societies, where parties are viewed as the most important structural and functional elements of the political organization of society, in Russia political parties are estimated by a large majority of citizens as less important in comparison with other political institutions. Russians claim that the possibilities of the parties, except for the ruling party, to adequately respond to the increased demands and requirements of groups whose interests they express are very much limited. There are noticeable signs of weakening of the opposition parties in the Duma, not able to compete with the ruling party. As well as strengthening of barriers to the creation of new authoritative political forces capable to improve political life in the country. The authors emphasize that constant and considerable changes of party politics prevent the establishment of a stable system of party loyalties, weaken the dependence of political behavior of citizens on society traditions of political choices and increase the likelihood of unpredictable political behavior. Analysis of the balance between the party reform plans and mass political sentiments leads to the conclusion that the course of creation of a multi-party system with wide pluralistic orientation finds no support in the overwhelming majority of Russians.

Political trust and job insecurity in 18 European polities

Several decades of trust research has confirmed that difficult national economic conditions help explain citizens' low levels of political trust. But research points to a much less important role for personal economic factors. The latter finding, it is argued here, is a result of flawed survey questions and model misspecification. We actually know very little about the precise economic concerns that may generate low levels of trust and about the mechanisms via which they do so, resulting in a rather thin causal story. This paper seeks to address this lacuna, focusing on an issue of increasing importance in advanced economies: job insecurity. Using individual-level data from 18 European polities at two different time points, the paper finds that job insecurity generates lower levels of trust in politicians, political parties and political institutions and lower levels of satisfaction with democratic performance. Importantly, job insecurity's effect does not diminish as one moves from specific to more diffuse objects of political trust, as previous research suggests it should. The paper also finds that the effect of job insecurity is exacerbated if citizens have negative perceptions of the performance of the wider economy. Finally, and drawing on the occupational psychology literature, the paper proposes a novel causal mechanism to link job insecurity to political trust. The intuition is that job insecurity violates a ‘psychological-democratic’ trust contract between workers and the state. The mechanism is consistent with the observed results. The paper thus contributes to both the empirical and theoretical debates on the linkages between political trust and economic performance.

Does regulation make political parties more popular? A multi-level analysis of party support in Europe

This article examines the relationship between party regulation, trust in political parties and partisanship in 24 European democracies in 2010. It tests two rival hypotheses, one suggesting that the regulation of political parties improves party support among electorates, and the other arguing the opposite case that regulation weakens support for parties. These hypotheses are tested using a multi-level modelling strategy that controls for a number of variables that might account for trust in parties and partisanship at the individual level. The evidence suggests that heavy regulation of political parties is associated with low levels of trust in parties and fewer partisans in these countries. This finding persists even in the presence of a variety of control variables. The analysis uses cross-sectional data and so definitive causal relationships cannot be fully identified, but the data implies that regulation by the state in the context of a severe economic recession could be having the effect of stifling support for political parties and weakening civil society.

Democratic Performance of Parties and Legitimacy in Europe

This article analyses the development of legitimacy across 20 European democracies (1990–2010). The claim is that the democratic performance of parties affects levels of legitimacy. A conceptual and empirical discussion is presented to establish this relationship. Democratic performance is characterised by trusting parties to be responsive to the electorate and responsible in government. Legitimacy is defined as a composite measure representing satisfaction with parties, compliance with the rule of law as well as voter turnout and willingness to protest. The responsiveness of parties appears less representative on public concerns and governmental responsibility appears closer to party interests than to the general interest. Hence, a ‘democratic deficit’ seems to have emerged across Europe, manifested by more electoral volatility, new parties and alternation in government and lower survival rates of governments. This negatively affects trust in parties, parliament and government efficacy. Hence, party behaviour has not strongly contributed to political legitimacy since the 1990s.

Strengthening the Roles of Political Parties in Public Accountability - A Case Study of a New Approach in Political Party Assistance

Donors in development cooperation increasingly emphasize the importance of public accountability in developing countries for the good functioning of democratic institutions, governance and the effectiveness of their aid. Political parties are prime actors in a democratic society that have essential roles to fulfil in public accountability. However, only few donors work with them. As a result, there is relatively little knowledge and experience available. This paper aims to contribute to this body of knowledge by assessing how and to what extent a new approach of so called 'Centre's for Multiparty Democracy', national platforms for and by political parties, assist parties in their key roles between citizen and state to enhance public accountability. This is done in a case study on Kenya. The paper also explores the main constraints to public accountability and to what extent cooperation between parties and civil society has been enhanced. A new conceptual framework that differentiates political party's roles in public accountability in four domains and three phases of the accountability process is used to assess CMD-Kenya's contribution. The paper concludes that CMDs' approach explores interesting new ways to strengthen the roles of parties in public accountability. Its main contribution lies in enhancing mutual trust and strengthening politicians' awareness of the value that parties have to add to a democratic society in providing them with a platform that helped them to establish their identities as parties. At the same time societal trust in parties was strengthened by organizing joint projects between parties and civil society actors. Considering its recent set up in 2004, CMD-K has been relatively successful in initiating modest changes in some of the formal practices and policies of parties and to some extent in the behaviour of individual politicians. On the other hand deeper changes in the underlying 'rules of the game', in parties' stability and their added value to society, have hardly been realized as strong traditional informal power relations, donor dependency, institutional governance problems and managing multiple accountabilities on multiple levels pose serious threats to CMD-Kenya's functioning and therefore to its clout and relevance in the future.

Construction, dimension reduction and uncertainty analysis of an index of trust in public institutions

Research on social capital in general and trust in particular is markedly increased. The worldwide problem of low and decreasing levels of trust in many public institutions is greatly debated. This is a very important problem because the trust citizens have in public institutions may foster democratic practices and facilitate better provision of public services. Moreover, trust is a central element of social order and survival of any democratic regime: it affects institutional performance, wellbeing, economic development and crime reduction. Public institutions should pay very much attention to citizens’ trust in them and in particular when introducing reforms aiming at improving their functioning. Trust is difficult to be assessed due to its quite elusive meaning. An index of general trust in public institutions is proposed within the framework of composite indicators. It is shown how to reduce the dimension of the index by finding out the most and least important aspects of it. Uncertainty analysis is used to test whether dimension reduction results are robust or not with respect to plausible changes in variable values and variable transformations. An application to data from the European Social Survey is discussed. The results show the very important role of the trust in politicians and political parties in explaining the level of general trust in public institutions.

The Perils of Political Competition

This article explains the puzzling finding that postcommunist citizens living in countries with higher quality institutions have lower levels of political trust and participation. Why do political trust and participation not follow the quality of democratic institutions? I argue that in postcommunist Europe vibrant and robust political competition has stifled trust and, in turn, participation. Using multilevel data, I show that the polities that experienced vibrant political competition in their electoral arenas also witnessed the highest levels of disillusionment with political parties and, consequently, with the political system. Decades of monopolization of the electoral arena by communist parties left Eastern Europeans ill prepared to appreciate vigorous political competition, which, depending on its intensity, tended to depress trust in political parties as an institution and, consequently, stifled political participation.

For God and Gaga: Comparing the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse and Homonationalism in Canada and the United States

For God and Gaga: Comparing the Same-Sex Marriage Discourse and Homonationalism in Canada and the United States

Volatile Counter-Cosmopolitans: Explaining the Electoral Performance of Radical Right Parties in Poland and Eastern Germany

Despite several breakthroughs that indicate radical right parties' significant electoral potential, they remain highly volatile players in both Poland and eastern Germany. This is puzzling because radical right competitors can benefit from favorable politico-cultural conditions shaped by postcommunist legacies. The electoral markets in Poland and the eastern German Länder show low levels of affective party identification and low levels of political trust in mainstream parties and government institutions. Most importantly, there is a sizeable, yet largely unrepresented segment of voters who share salient counter-cosmopolitan preferences. They point to a “silent counterrevolution“ against globalization and cosmopolitan value change that displays substantive affinities to radical right ideology. Offering a transborder regional comparison of the four most relevant radical right parties and their conditions for electoral mobilization in Poland and eastern Germany, this article argues that the radical right's crossnational volatility-and often underperformance-in elections is mainly caused by internal supply side factors. They range from organizational deficiencies, leadership issues, and internal feuds, to strategic failures and a lack of democratic responsiveness. In turn, the disequilibrium between counter-cosmopolitan demand and its political representation is likely to be reduced if radical right competitors become more effective agents of electoral mobilization-or new, better organized ones emerge.

Identifying Criminals and Crorepatis in Indian Politics: An Analysis of Two Supreme Court Rulings

Abstract While there is overwhelming support for democracy in India and voter turnout is higher than in most Western democracies, there seems to be dangerously low levels of trust in political parties and politicians. There are at least two facts about Indian politics that merit mention. First, the number of members of Parliament (MPs) in the Lok Sabha or Lower House (which is directly elected by the people in a first past the post system) with criminal records is striking. Second, a significant feature of Indian politics is the number of extremely wealthy—or crorepati (multi-millionaire) to use common parlance—MPs in Parliament. The criminal records of MPs and their financial worth are available in the public domain thanks to two landmark Supreme Court judgments in 2002 and 2003. In this essay I examine these two judgments and the reasoning behind the Court's efforts to inject some transparency into the political system. I argue that while the courts and commissions have had a positive impact in regulati...

Intricacies of Privacy Protection in Electronic Transactions: A Critical Analysis

In electronic transactions lots of issues such as jurisdictional issues in case of disputes, identification of true identity, Spoofing, privacy protection so one and so forth are involved at par. This paper is all about analyzing the issue of data protection and privacy. Privacy is an important aspect of one’s life, as everyone desires to maintain privacy of his life, his profession, his work plan and of his transactions as well. Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in the UN Declaration of Human Rights the International, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in many other international and regional treaties. Protection of privacy in online transactions is not an easy task as the privacy in electronic transactions in not only infringed physically but virtually as well. We have much technological software like cookies, Trojan, web bugs, so one and so forth infringing the privacy of the data directly and indirectly. Assurance of privacy and its proper protection inculcate trust in the parties and thus lead the people to get through more and more deals in online mode. It is quite evident that assurance of privacy and its protection will definitely lead electronic transactions a step ahead as is desired in the realm of globalization, industrialization and privatization. Indian context has right to privacy as constitutional rights and online privacy protection is being provided in Information Technology Act, 2008 as well in other scattered statues like SEBI’s regulation for privacy protection through companies, RBI’s Guidelines to protect online privacy in electronic banking system etc. So the issue is not that the legal provisions are not there to protect privacy in electronic transactions but the issue is 'that whether the legal provisions in Indian Legal system are efficient enough to promote protection to privacy and security of data in electronic transactions going through all the challenges powering out the world of electronic transactions.' The safety and security of a customer’s personal information lies within the hands of the business. And Being a Governing Body State is under an Obligation to protect provide and to promote the legal rights of the individuals. So it would be interesting to look into that how the State laws and policies are providing protection against the privacy infringement and where it is lagging behind. And what can be done as improvements in the Legal framework of Internet to procure more and more security to the privacy of the users of Internet.

Citizenship education in Post-conflict contexts: A review of the literature

In recent years, citizenship education has been the subject of much international attention, including two major cross-national studies. However, few reviews of civic education scholarship include research from post-conflict societies. This omission is notable because post-conflict situations offer distinct challenges to instilling both democratic norms and a sense of social cohesion to ensure democracy and social justice in the future. This paper seeks to address this need, providing a review of research on citizenship education in post-conflict contexts published in English-language journals in order to delineate similarities and differences across such contexts. Findings common to many studies on citizenship education in post-conflict countries include the avoidance of controversial issues, the unique role of ethnicity, a lack of trust in political parties and authoritarianism. Some studies also reported a movement towards global or regional identities and student desire for active citizenship education.