Political Trust, Perceived Threat, and Preferences for Alternatives to Representative Democracy

Several authors have speculated that in times of multiple crises affecting democracies, many citizens have lost trust in core institutions of the representative system and are open to alternative forms of governance, including less democratic ones. If elected representatives are not perceived to be trustworthy, this may spur demands for alternative forms of governance, such as citizen-led or technocratic models. But to date, it is not exactly clear how different dimensions of political trust are related to citizens’ preferences for alternatives to representative democracy. This is where our paper comes in: It takes an encompassing perspective asking which forms of democratic government citizens with high and low levels of trust in executive and legislative institutions prefer. And, taking up discussions about political instability in times of crisis and threat, it sheds light on the relationship between trust and democratic preferences under conditions of perceived threat. Our study includes preferences for representative, deliberative, direct-democratic, technocratic, and leadership forms of democratic governance. To assess the danger of democratic backsliding, we equally study preferences for an authoritarian leadership model. We hypothesize that, ceteris paribus, low levels of trust relate to stronger preferences for alternative models of governance, and that this relationship is especially pronounced for those individuals who perceive high levels of threat. We use data from an online survey conducted in the United States and in Germany in December 2022. Studying the relationship between trust and democratic preferences in both countries enables us to make comparisons between political systems with different institutional settings, levels of political polarization and dynamics of democratic mood. Our findings speak to the wider literature on the relevance of political trust, citizen preferences for different forms of democratic governance, and the danger of democratic backsliding.