Beyond Trust: A Tripartite Framework for Analyzing Political Trust, Distrust, and Mistrust
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Disaffection with democratic politics is becoming the norm and its causes more varied. Empirical work on political trust, however, almost always relies on blunt survey items measuring only ‘trust’, but it is unknown whether this adequately captures diverse trust attitudes. In this paper, we propose a tripartite distinction between trust, distrust, and mistrust. Empirically, we draw on original data from 13 surveys across 11 countries and 52 focus groups involving 311 participants in eight countries to design and test survey items to distinguish between these trust orientations. We show that they are indeed distinct among the public. We find that 20-40% of the public report no coherent trust attitude and ‘trust’ is a minority positions in all countries studied. We go on to document the socio-demographic profiles of those likely to hold these positions. Our analysis provides a new empirical and conceptual framework for exploring political trust and its absence.
