Critical or Alienated? Assessing the Mediating Effect of Education in the Relationship Between (Dis)Trust and Non-Conventional Political Participation

"In this paper we argue that citizens’ evaluations of the quality of the representational channel will play a crucial role in shaping their political behavior, with negative evaluations reducing the likelihood that an individual will vote, but increasing the probability that he will engage in alternative forms of extra-institutional participation such as demonstrating. Moreover, we contend that the association between these evaluations and political participation is moderated by individual resources as measured by education. Using novel data on how citizens evaluate different aspects of democracy we find that negative perceptions of the quality of the representational channel discourage voting, but only promote participation in demonstrations among the highly educated. These findings highlight potential inequalities in citizens’ ability to voice their demands: while highly educated individuals are able to translate their negative evaluations of the institutional channel of representation into extra-representational forms of participation, low educated individuals simply withdraw from politics”