Does Political Disenchantment Lead to Protest? A Multilevel Analysis

Political disenchantment - a deeply cynical attitude towards the political system and political actors - has become widespread in the representative democracies. How the disenchanted citizens manifest their negative attitudes has direct implications for how political disenchantment affects the state of democracy. It is often claimed that participation in protest and other forms of elite-challenging acts of political participation has grown as a consequence. In this sense, negative attitudes may have positive implications for democracy since the critical citizens help hold the formal decision-maker accountable through more disruptive or alternative modes of political participation. Although seemingly a reasonable suggestion, empirical findings suggest that the connection between negative political evaluations and political involvement is less straightforward. It has not been possible to establish conclusively that protesters generally hold more negative evaluations of the political authorities than the population at large. Some studies find the expected negative connection between them, but other studies find non-significant or even positive linkages. Hence, there is still a need to examine the link between political attitudes and protest. In this study, it is argued that it is essential to distinguish a healthy critical attitude that may well be connected to protest participation from feelings of alienation and confusion that are more likely to lead to resignation. Political disenchantment may therefore still provide an obstacle for an active citizenship. The empirical analyses will identify groups of citizens with different attitudinal profiles before moving on to examining differences in protest behaviour between these groups with the help of multilevel analyses. The data for the study comes from the European Social Survey 2008 meaning the analyses are restricted to a context of European democracies. The results provide insights into how negative political attitudes affect citizen behaviour and when they become obstacles for an active citizenship in these countries.