Great Expectations: The Effect of Democratic Ideals and Evaluations on Political Trust

Rising public expectations are frequently put forth as a key cause of the current democratic malaise, yet empirical studies on public expectations are scarce. In this study, we break new ground by rigorously investigating public expectations and evaluations of the political system in 29 countries using the 2012 European Social Survey (n=54,673). Using Latent Class Analysis, we have identified in preliminary analyses 4 distinct groups of citizens that share the same unique set of expectations vis-à-vis the political system i.e. (1) strong expectations for checks and balances e.g. unconstrained opposition parties and media, (2) high expectation regarding welfare responsibilities, (3) particularly low expectations overall, (4) distinctively high expectations overall. Next we investigate how these groups evaluate their political system on these characteristics and how the discrepancies between expectations and evaluations affect their political trust levels using multilevel modelling. Thereby, we provide a unique insight in the expectations contemporary citizens hold in Western democracies and its effect on the current democratic malaise.