Social and Political Determinants of Confidence in Democratic Institutions in Europe: Does the Balkan Region Change the Pattern?
Social and Political Determinants of Confidence in Democratic Institutions in Europe: Does the Balkan Region Change the Pattern?

Author(s): Marta Kołczyńska
Subject(s): Politics, Governance, Sociology, Political behavior, Politics and society, Comparative politics
Published by: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Keywords: Western Balkans; trust; democracy; social capital; institutions
Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to investigate social and political determinants of trust towards democratic institutions in the Western Balkans as part of the wider European region. Trust has been considered a vital element of social capital by i.a. F. Fukuyama (1995) or R. Putnam (2000). In democratic regimes citizens’ decisions in the process of delegating power are made under conditions of uncertainty about motivations and future actions of political leaders. Trust in state institutions is therefore one of the key principles providing sustainability and legitimacy of political systems. Although a certain level of “healthy distrust” is needed to keep control over democratic institutions, trust is essential to maintaining a democracy and ensuring its appropriate and satisfactory quality of operations. But trust depends on an already achieved level of democracy. Building on a study of structural determinants of trust in public institutions by Slomczynki and Janicka (2009) in countries included in the European Social Survey, this paper provides a quantitative analysis of the relationship between trust in institutions, on the one hand, and democracy and level of economic development, as well as individual-level variables related to socio-economic status, on the other. I use data from recent waves of the World Value Survey to allow extension of the set of studied countries to the Western Balkan region. Findings of the current analysis confirm already identified patterns in ESS countries with regard to the strong interrelation of declared trust in democratic institutions with the assessment of democratic functioning, as well as with the “objective” quality of democracy in a country, as measured by one of the democracy indices used worldwide, and the relatively weak, although statistically significant dependence of confidence in democratic institutions on the socio-economic stratification position most countries. The paper also reveals significant differences in determinants of trust in institutions in East European and Balkan states.

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