How Healthy is Our Democracy? Public Health and Political Trust

• In Event: Health, Equity and Democracy

Abstract

Though previous scholarship has investigated the impact of political structures on health, there has been a recent shift in focus to the impact of public health on politics. Most studies find that poor health diminishes an individual’s likelihood to vote, though debates over the mechanisms underpinning that relationship are unsettled. To what extent does political trust mediate the relationship between health, voting, and other forms of political participation?

Though at first glance a negative relationship might seem intuitive (the worse you feel, the less you trust or participate), we do see individuals mobilizing, protesting, writing letters, and even voting based on health-related issues. We propose to evaluate the relationship between health and political participation by examining the individual’s cost-benefit calculus of whether or not to participate, weighing the social/mental benefits of participation alongside physical/social costs that political participation might incur, and assessing how political trust mediates, mitigates, or fuels these relationships. We employ unique data, collected through a public health initiative designed to increase wellness and community connectedness, to measure individuals’ participation and health levels.

Our paper offers a few key contributions. First, we enhance insights into the mechanisms underpinning the relationship between health and political participation, particularly isolating when and why different mechanisms come into play. Second, we operationalize social, mental, and physical health costs and benefits to the political participation calculus; these costs and benefits are often taken as either “given” or “unknowable” in many investigations into political participation. Finally, by allowing political participation to vary in physical intensity and risk, we can evaluate a nuanced picture of the health-trust-participation nexus.

Authors

• Gina Yannitell Reinhardt, University of Essex

• Dragana Vidovic, University of Essex