The behavioural conditions of trust in legislators: How elite-mass interactions condition the role of personalised electoral rules

Personalized electoral rules aim to facilitate a close interpersonal connection between individual politicians and geographic constituents. As a consequence, they are assumed to enhance positive beliefs about politics such as trust in the politicians that constituents interact with. Surprisingly, we have little evidence about whether this assumption holds true, what the mechanisms are, and what the broader implications might be. This is despite the surge of institutional personalization that is justified by this very claim. This paper explores this issue while drawing from available national election surveys for Germany. In this vein, we aim to make headway in two regards. To explore mechanisms, we first gauge the role of interpersonal elite-mass interactions mediating between electoral rules and the beliefs of voters. To explore the broader implications of interpersonal trust, we secondly focus on whether and how this is related to other types of beliefs such as trust in political institutions and satisfaction with democracy. This paper contributes to salient discussions about the consequences of personalized electoral systems, about the conditions of political trust, and about the broader conditions and implications of trust in legislators.