Political Trust and Political Interest: Implications for Democratic Health

• In Event: Perceived Representation and Support for Democracy

Abstract

Interest in politics is a key predictor of a host of important political attitudes and behaviors. There is, however, surprisingly little work that explores the causes of political interest. In our recent article (Peterson et al 2022), we theorized that, because being interested in politics requires time and effort, the electorate’s level of political interest would be highest when the electorate believes the government cannot be trusted or is performing poorly. In other words, political interest is an essential prerequisite to the public's motivation to monitor the goings on of government. and to keep elected officials in check. And that motivation increases as trust in government decreases. Consistent with our theory, we found that Americans’ interest in politics has an inverse relationship with macro levels of trust in government. In this paper, we explore the microfoundations of the macro relationship. Through the analysis of panel data and an original experiment, we test whether individual-level changes in trust in government cause changes in their interest in politics. These results point to a positive effect of declines in political trust on political interest. We discuss the implication of our results for the conceptual link between political interest and democratic health.

Authors

• Joanne Miller, University of Delaware

• David A. M. Peterson, Iowa State University