Disentangling an Elusive Relationship: How Democratic Value Orientations Affect Political Trust in Different Regimes

• Published date: 01 June 2020
• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919829832
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919829832

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(2) 366 –380

© 2019 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912919829832

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Article

Introduction

A recent academic as well as public debate has raised the

question whether democratic values are on the rise or in

decline. Although, when asked in opinion surveys, citi-

zens across the entire globe nowadays overwhelmingly

choose democracy as their preferred political system

(Chu et al. 2016; Haerpfer and Kizilova 2014; Klingemann

2014; Letsa and Wilfahrt 2018; Robbins 2015; Sanborn

2014), younger birth cohorts in established democracies

place less importance on living in a democracy than older

cohorts, suggesting a gradual decline of democratic value

orientations (Foa and Mounk 2016).1 Despite the enor-

mous attention this debate has generated, it has yet to

address one of the most fundamental questions: does it

even matter? What are the consequences of citizens’

political value orientations?

With value orientations being very broad and abstract

concepts that are unlikely to influence behavior (Ajzen

2012), we need to assess their effect on more proximate

attitudes such as political trust if we want to infer any-

thing about the real-world consequences of both a rise

and a decline of democratic values. The relationship

between democratic value orientations and political

trust, however, has continually proven to be elusive.

Initially, pro-democratic value orientations were wel-

comed as bases of democratic support and thought to

increase political trust in democracies (Almond and

Verba 1963; Easton 1975). Yet, scholars in the critical-

citizens tradition have repeatedly challenged this view,

arguing that a shift toward more modern and pro-demo-

cratic values would make citizens more demanding of the

political regime, thereby decreasing political trust (Dalton

2004; Dalton and Shin 2014; Inglehart 1999; Klingemann

2014; Norris 2011), and the empirical evidence on how

pro-democratic value orientations affect political trust in

democracies remains inconclusive (Catterberg and

829832PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919829832Political Research QuarterlyMauk

research-article2019

1GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Marlene Mauk, GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Unter

Sachsenhausen 6-8, Cologne 50667, Germany.

Email: marlene.mauk@gesis.org

Disentangling an Elusive Relationship:

How Democratic Value Orientations

Affect Political Trust in Different

Regimes

Marlene Mauk1

Abstract

The question whether democratic values are on the rise or in decline has received much attention in political-culture

research. Yet, few scholars have studied the consequences either of these trends has for political trust. Although

political trust has long been attributed a central role for the functioning and stability of any political system, we still know

little about the relationship between citizens’ value orientations and political trust. Recent advances have furthered

the discussion by conceptualizing this relationship to be conditional on the respective country’s level of democracy;

yet this literature does not take into account findings that demonstrate citizens rarely have an accurate grasp of

their country’s democratic quality. Integrating the two strands of literature, this contribution suggests a relationship

between democratic value orientations and political trust that is universally contingent on citizens’ perceptions of

democratic quality. Testing this proposition for over one hundred democracies and autocracies, it finds that democratic

value orientations decrease political trust whenever citizens perceive their regime’s democratic quality as lacking and

increase political trust whenever citizens perceive their political regime as being of high democratic quality. In contrast,

the actual level of democracy plays no role for the effect of democratic value orientations on political trust.

Keywords

autocracies, democracies, democratic quality, democratic values, political culture, political trust, regime support