Conditional Effects of Education on Political Trust

• In Event: Democratic Education? How Schooling Shapes Civic Engagement and Social Capital

Abstract

This paper explores the conditional effects of education on political trust in democratic countries. It analyzes under what circumstances education lowers or increases public confidence in political institutions by looking at education's three major conditional effects. Education can be linked with post-material values and can lead to a critical stance toward political institutions. Education under meritocratic institutions can be create an "enabling effect" and hence increase people's trust in political institutions. Education can also interact with corruption perception, in which educated citizens in more corrupt nations will have lower trust in political institutions and the educated in more clean states will have higher trust. These three interactive mechanisms are tested in light of 40 democratic countries represented in the sixth wave of World Values Survey. The paper offers a multilevel, hierarchical modeling, which also incorporates the interactive effects of education. The paper aims to contribute to the extant literature on political institutions and democratization by offering a multi-faceted analysis on the relationship between education and political trust in democratic countries.

Authors

• Kursat Cinar, Middle East Technical University

• Meral Ugur Cinar, Bilkent University

• Tekin Kose, TED University