Is trusting always good? The roles of institutional and system trust according to democratic social movements

Democratic social movements are sometimes perceived as actors capable of restoring social and political trust in society. From this perspective, the role of social movements can be twofold. They can monitor and correct democratic institutions and encourage them to become more trustworthy in the eyes of citizens. Yet, they can also act as an opposing force to these institutions without necessarily helping them to become more trusted by citizens. In this paper, we aim to explore this issue from the perspective of social movements themselves. We ask how core members and followers of democratic social movements perceive the roles of institutional and system (dis)trust in the functioning of democracy. We draw evidence from the comparative research implemented in eight European countries, focusing on the cases of Czech Republic and Serbia. Two democratic social movements were included into the national sample. For every movement, one focus group was organized with its core members and one with its followers. Results showed that the movements were highly concerned with the topic of institutional and system trust and considered trust a precondition of a well-functioning democracy. At the same time, the specific understanding of trust differed between the movements. We identified a distinction between what can be called a normative, critical and anti-system understanding of trust. According to the normative understanding, the current form of democracy was perceived as a status quo and essentially good, and trust in democratic institutions was perceived as always positive (one movement in Czechia). In contrast, the critical understanding was associated with the belief that the current form of democracy was flawed and its reform was necessary (one movement in Czechia and one in Serbia). Finally, an anti-system understanding of trust was observed in one Serbian movement, where complete change of the system is seen as necessary. Trust in institutions was then perceived in an ambivalent way because it could prevent citizens from demanding a more radical system change. Each understanding of trust implied how social movement members perceived their roles in restoring institutional trust. These roles could move from pushing the current institutions to replace their untrustworthy representatives in the former case or advancing novel forms of liberal democracy and institutions to finally inventing distinctively different democratic system that will emphasize equality and inclusion.