Authoritarianism, Perceived Threat, and Trust in Political Institutions

The more authoritarian an individual, the more intolerant and punitive their attitudes and policy preferences and the more they yield to authority. The more authoritarian should, therefore, be more supportive of political institutions than are their more libertarian counterparts. I build on recent research to further hypothesize that the difference between authoritarians and libertarians in their support for political institutions will narrow among those who perceive greater threat. Utilizing data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey, I conduct a series of multilevel analyses examining the relationship between authoritarianism and confidence in five political institutions (the armed forces, the police, parliament, government, and the courts), conditional on perceived threat. The results demonstrate that the more authoritarian are more trusting in political institutions and this relationship is, for some institutions, conditional on perceived threat. These findings add to our understanding of how values orientations can affect individual trust in government institutions and why support for more aggressive solutions to societal problems may dominate when perceived threat becomes more commonplace.