Trust in parliament

• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1647

SPECIAL ISSUE PAPER

Trust in parliament*

Soren Holmberg |Staffan Lindberg |Richard Svensson

Political Science, University of Gothenburg,

Sweden

Correspondence

Staffan Lindberg, Political Science, University

of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Email: xlista@gu.se

Parliaments are—or should at least be—the central rule‐making institutions in democratic

countries. If people do not have faith in the institution making the rules, it is less likely that people

live by them. Consequently, it is beneficiary if trust in parliament is high. But it is also a normative

good in itself. If the people do not trust the key institution whereby they can exercise “rule by the

people over itself,”democracy itself is endangered. Secondly, trust levels should be reasonably

even spread among relevant social and political groups in a society because parliament should

ideally be a nonpartisan level playing field. However, because the majority in parliament typically

chooses and sustains the acting government, one could say that legislatures in parliamentary

democracies should not be level playing fields. According to this argument, there should be

differences in trust in parliament between groups of individuals with varying political affiliations.

Supporters of the majority in parliament should be expected to have higher trust in the legislature

compared to citizens who voted for the opposition.

We test our three hypotheses on data from some 80 countries participating in World Value

Survey, either in Waves 5 or 6. We find that people in both new and established democracies

harbor lower levels of trust than an intuitive interpretation of normative theory would lead us

to expect. We also find that the attitudes of tens of thousands of citizens garnered from across

42 new and old democracies suggest that levels of average trust in groups of these societies

are not as equally distributed, as a simple reading of democratic theory would have us to believe.

In particular, individuals with a stronger interest in politics, and who are winners by the account of

the last election, have statistically substantively relevant higher average levels of trust in

parliament as an institution than do other citizens. The latter seems to us especially potentially

problematic in particular for some of the new democracies where majority‐dominant parties

manage to cling on to power over several election cycles. If what we find here were generally

applicable also over several election cycles, we would expect the gap between winners and losers

to widen and sediment and potentially sow the seeds of anti‐system movements opposed to

democracy. Parliament is obviously a partisan creature in the eyes of most citizens in

democracies. The level playing field idea does not fly.

1|INTRODUCTION

Parliaments are—or should at least be—central decision‐making

institutions in democratic systems. Parliaments set budgets, decide

on policies, and define the legal norms in society, and if people do

not have faith in the institution that makes these rules, it is not very

likely that people live by them. Hence, trust supposedly lowers all

forms of transaction costs associated with governing. Consequently,

it is beneficiary if trust in parliament is high. It will make the democratic

system runs more efficiently. But it is also a normative good in itself.

Any modern form of democracy is necessarily representative in

order to solve the problem of how the people should rule over itself

(e.g., Dahl, 1989, 277; Sartori, 1987, 30; Schedler, 1999). In that

context, parliament is a critical body, and if the people do not trust

the key institution whereby they can exercise “rule by the people over

itself,”democracy itself is endangered.

Thus, a normative hypothesis—something we hope for—is that

trust in parliament should be fairly high in democratic systems. Perhaps

not 100%—we do not want blind faith—but quite high in order to yield

the good outcome effects.

Furthermore—our normative Hypothesis 2—trust levels should be

reasonably even spread among relevant social and political groups in a

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

Wallenberg Foundation in Sweden. The authors gratefully acknowledge their

financial support (MMW2012.0215).

Received: 12 December 2016 Accepted: 30 December 2016

DOI 10.1002/pa.1647

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1647.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1647

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of9