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

• Date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1642
• Author: Hennie Kotze,Carlos Garcia‐Rivero
• Published date: 01 February 2017

SPECIAL ISSUE PAPER

Institutions, crises, and political confidence in seven

contemporary democracies. An elite–mass analysis*

Hennie Kotze

1

|Carlos Garcia‐Rivero

2,3

1

Political Science, Stellenbosch University,

Matieland, South Africa

2

Political Science, Universitat de Valencia,

Valencia, Comunitat Valenciana, Spain

3

Centre for International and Comparative

Politics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Correspondence

Prof. Hennie Kotze, Stellenbosch University,

Political Science, Matieland, South Africa.

Email: hjk@sun.ac.za

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 con-

solidation 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.

1|INTRODUCTION

All democratic governments need the support of the citizenry to make

binding decisions regarding the delivery of public goods and the pro-

tection of political rights. In new democracies, it is in the interest of

the state to strengthen its autonomy, although in old democracies,

the state must maintain its control over economic and social interac-

tions, for which it relies on the support of the public. To operate effi-

ciently, we found that all democracies must therefore possess a

certain amount of institutional confidence. To put it more bluntly, we

found that if political confidence or trust in government institutions

is declining, the survival of the governing elite and, at times, the dem-

ocratic regime itself is at stake.

A number of contributors in Norris (1999) reached the important

conclusion that over the last 20–30 years, there has been a noticeable

decline in support for regime institutions. This observation holds true

even for established democracies and is indicative of a deficit in polit-

ical confidence in many democracies both old and new (see also

Dalton, 2014: 255–276). Before this general decline in support, it

was already clear that in most democracies, political protests or uncon-

ventional forms of political participation are signs of oscillating confi-

dence in the political system (see Barnes & Kaase, 1979:110).

In concurrence with Mcallister (in Norris, 1999:190), “support”and

“confidence”are used interchangeably in this article, “… since they

convey a broad meaning concerning the links between popular beliefs

about government and representative institutions.”Institutional confi-

dence is an important element of legitimacy, but the latter concept is

much more specific. Defined by Lipset (1960:4), legitimacy is “… the

capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the

existing political institutions are the most appropriate one for the soci-

ety.”A continuous decline in confidence or institutional trust may thus

threaten the legitimacy of state institutions.

Fortunately, in democracies, elections can result in victorious

parties whose policies are more congruent with the majority's policy

choices. It is also true that “…there is little doubt that high reserves

of mass support provide a valuable cushion that help democracies to

prevent the emergence of crises, as well as to overcome critical

moments as they arise”(Schedler, 2001:81). It is therefore only in very

few instances that political protests have resulted in the overthrow of

*This joint research project was supported by the Marianne and Marcus Wallen-

berg Foundation in Sweden. The authors gratefully acknowledge their financial

support (MMW2012.0215).

Received: 12 December 2016 Accepted: 30 December 2016

DOI 10.1002/pa.1642

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1642.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1642

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of17

a government. In most cases, a chronic lack of confidence in govern-

ment institutions is more likely to lead to the replacement of the

incumbent political leaders through electoral means.

Together with basic political rights and liberties, confidence in state

institutions is considered to be a necessary condition for a strong civil

society and political stability. It is commonly argued that “without insti-

tutional trust, free participation is non‐existent and the free expression

of minorities is uncertain. If these minorities fear repression, their

involvement in the political system is unlikely. This can result in aggres-

sive forms of political participation outside the system. In other words,

without confidence, essentially based on trust in its institutions, a dem-

ocratic system has little chance of survival”(García‐Rivero, Kotzé, & Du

Toit, 2002: 168; see also Gibson, 2001 and Vujcic, 1999).

Arguably then, institutional trust in the state is considered a crucial

element for the development of a strong civil society to counterbal-

ance the excesses of the state. From the classic study by Almond

and Verba (1963) to the influential works of Inglehart (1990); Rose

(1994); Lagos (1997); Putnam (1993) and Rice and Feldman (1997),

all have regarded institutional trust as a crucial dimension in the link

between political culture and democracy. Institutional trust enables cit-

izens to rely on civil society institutions to mobilise against state insti-

tutions. However, low levels of institutional trust render citizens “more

likely to reject the existing political system and support parties of the

extreme Right or Left”(Inglehart, 1988; Lagos, 1997).

There is thus ample consensus that institutional confidence is nec-

essary for political stability in established democracies as well as the

consolidation of new democracies. Institutional confidence is not only

required from the public, but also elites. Political elites in particular,

need to share this confidence with regards to their guidance of state

institutions.

Although there is a general consensus about the need for mass

and elite confidence in democratic institutions; there is, however, little

agreement about the basis of this confidence and what the democratic

outcomes of government should be. Minimalist approaches are based

on procedural outcomes expecting political rights and electoral process

from democracy. Others go beyond and expect democracy to produce

economic outcomes, reduce inequality, and provide social and eco-

nomic well‐being.

New democracies have often enjoyed decades of growth and

prosperity leaving little room to value the impact of poverty on dem-

ocratic health. However, the situation changed with the world finan-

cial crisis and the subsequent economic recession in 2008. The crisis

forced many countries to implement a series of tough austerity mea-

sures as well as programmes for structural reforms of the welfare

state and labour market. To a large extent, these policies were explic-

itly imposed by external actors, leaving national governments and

parliaments little room to manoeuvre in national politics and the

economy. It also left citizens without the capacity of autonomous

decision making (Beckert & Streeck, 2012). Citizens' and civil society

organisations' acceptance (or lack thereof) of the new structural, fis-

cal, and social policies was largely irrelevant (Armingeon & Baccaro,

2012). The common response of the citizenry to the imposed mea-

sures of austerity was social unrest, upheaval, and political instability,

all of which impacted on the legitimacy of the democratic regimes. In

some countries, such as Spain, Greece, and Italy, social unrest gave

rise to new political parties who claimed to represent civil society

and ordinary citizens, thus showing confrontation between the state

and civil society.

In the first part of our analysis, we deal with the question of

whether the massive interference with political elites' (specifically par-

liamentarians) capacity for decision making, which occurred due to the

2008–2013 recession, eroded citizens' and elites' confidence in state

institutions and civil society. This question therefore addresses the

abovementioned context in which majority parties in parliaments were

forced to implement stringent economic policies in the face of public

protest and rejection of these policies. The second question that arises

is whether there are any differences in the confidence levels of the

public and political elites with regard to state institutions and civil soci-

ety, that is, a relatively large disconnect between voters and their rep-

resentatives—with the expectation that members of opposition parties

in parliament would have less confidence in state institutions than the

members of the governing parties.

This article will, against this background, explore the level of insti-

tutional trust in seven countries at the mass and elite levels. The

research takes the form of a quantitative analysis based on the World

Values Surveys (WVS) and the elite surveys (parliamentarians) con-

ducted in 2006 (before the financial crisis) and in 2012–2013 (after

the crisis, when the worst of the economic crunch had passed) in the

seven countries selected. (For a technical overview of the elite surveys,

see Van Beek, 2010: 309–310; the same technique was used in 2013).

This time span allows for the analysis of the possible effect of the

recession on attitudes of the public and political elites of the various

countries (see Table 1).

The second part of the articleexplores what lies at the base of polit-

ical confidence in the selected countries.We investigate whether polit-

ical confidence in these countries is more strongly based on political

attitudes or whether it tends tobe influenced by economic attitudes.

For our analysis, we selected seven countries from different conti-

nents and regions: South Africa (Africa); Chile (Latin America);

Germany and Sweden (Western Europe); South Korea (Asia); Poland

(Eastern Europe); and Turkey (Eurasia). The selection of countries is

representative of a wide range of political, social, and cultural diversity

(including Traditional African, Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic belief

systems; old and new democracies; presidential and parliamentarian

systems). Importantly, the selection of case studies includes five

“third‐wave democracies”and two established democracies in Sweden

(in many instances, a model democracy) and Germany. Initially, in 2006,

the selection of countries (then excluding Turkey and Sweden) was

based on the “most different cases, most similar outcomes”design

(Van Beek, 2010:15). Based on the same format, Sweden and Turkey

were added in a second study (2013) undertaken by the research team

of the Transformation Research Initiative. This second study also

included surveys among the parliamentarians of the abovementioned

countries. The data of the seven countries, on elite and mass level,

were used for the 2013 comparison.

In the following section of our article, we discuss the most relevant

literature that serve as motivation for the use of elite attitudes in com-

parison with the public attitudes. Then follows an explanation of the

methodology and data used, and finally, the analysis and conclusions

will be presented.

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