Trust in Parliament: Trends Over Time

In this paper we explore the fall in trust in parliament. In the first section we examine the

importance of parliamentary trust. In the second section we examine the data, and establish this is a

trend that is unusual for the major formal political institutions, and examine how changing citizen

knowledge may have influenced this trend.

Why Is Parliamentary Trust Important?

The study of trust as a political phenomenon or cause of concern runs back over two millennia.

“When Tzŭ Kung asked what were the essentials of government, the Master replies: “Sufficient food,

sufficient forces and the confidence of the people.” (Confucius, c. 500 BC, p. 571 ). Yet, despite over

two thousand years of research, investigations remain “controversial and often inconclusive”

(Newton, 2007, p. 11).

Studies and theory on the impact of trust often differentiate between different objects of trust, for

instance Easton differentiates on three levels, at the macro level the political community, at the

meso level the regime, and at the micro level specific authorities (Easton, 1965); Norris divides the

meso level into regime principles, regime institutions, and regime performance (Norris, 1999, p. 10).

These studies conflate the two different roles of ‘government’. Bjørnshov (2010) argues there is a

need to distinguish between ‘bureaucratic mechanism’ and ‘electoral mechanisms’ in studying the

effects of social trust on institutional performance. He argues the distinction is helpful as it breaks

down the phenomena of trust and allows more granular analysis of how to improve it (Bjørnshov,

2010, p. 343). The same is true of institutional trust. Here we suggest the titles of the mechanisms

are unhelpful. The ‘electoral mechanism’ refers to more than just elections. It represents all

elements of participation in democracy, or the wider political system (Cain, Dalton, & Scarrow,

2003). The ‘bureaucratic mechanism’ in reference to parliaments is a simple category error.

Parliaments do produce administrative outputs, but these are not ‘bureaucracy’. Rather, parliaments

engage in administrative matters, which are then followed through by bureaucrats. There are two

different roles of government, one being ‘government qua political system’, and the second being

‘government qua administrators’. To take an illustrative example, one may support the political

system, and believe it is legitimate, but oppose any specific output of the system as administratively

immoral or ineffective. Equally, in an illegitimate system, one can support specific laws.

A number of studies identify different roles that trust plays in the political system. We can use the

definition by Rousseau to help identify what these are. “Trust is a psychological state comprising the

intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of

another” (Rousseau, Sitkin, & Camerer, 1998, p. 395).

We can pull out two crucial elements from this. Firstly is the ‘intention to accept vulnerability’. This

is identified by Scholz (1998) as the concept of eliciting voluntary compliance. By convincing citizens

to accept vulnerability, they are far more likely to be voluntarily compliant with the wishes of

government. When ‘A trusts B’, A believes B are acting in A’s interests, or are acting in some greater

interest which is not antithetical to A’s own. For the interest of brevity, in this discussion, we shall

consider the ‘greater interest’ as part of A’s own interests, since many citizens also do (we might

consider a sense of patriotism as indicative of this). This trust gains A’s voluntary compliance with B,

since A can be sure that A is not acting against A’s own interests in complying with an instruction

from B. Even if compliance is unpleasant, the A will believe the instruction is for the best in the long

run.

The second element of the definition worth noting is that the citizen has a positive expectation of

elite’s intentions and behaviour. This leads to two outcomes. Firstly, specific to the positive

intentions, citizens are more likely to suspend judgement on any specific action of the parliament.

Where citizens distrust parliament, their default expectation will be that the parliament is acting

negatively. Where trust is absent it takes only a small amount of negative information to convince a

citizen that the parliament is acting badly.

Thirdly, the expectation of positive behaviour and intentions means that citizens are less likely to

demand compliance mechanisms to ensure that positive outcomes ensue. Belief in positive

intentions and behaviour offers a belief that outcomes will occur when parliament acts, and if not,

the intention was for positive outcomes to occur and that this is merely a failure of implementation.

Citizens can rest easy that in the event that a divergence of their interests and their parliament’s

actions, that the latter will be amenable to reconsidering citizens’ interests. As such, citizens believe

that parliaments will comply with their wishes. Equally, policy will be made which reflects citizen’s

wishes. Without trust, citizens will demand extra compliance mechanisms to make sure that

parliaments comply with citizen’s wishes, and that policy is made which is fair and reasonable.

Combining these two dimensions, the object of trust (political outputs and administrative outputs)

and the effect (voluntary compliance by citizens, expectations of compliance by elites, and

institutional support in the form of suspended judgement), we can generate six categories of

impacts of trust on an institution.

Political Administrative

Voluntary Compliance System Stability Contingent Consent

Suspended Judgement Inter-Institutional Power Making Difficult Policy

Compliance Mechanisms Political Transaction Costs Administrative Transaction Costs

Table 1 - Six-Fold Matrix of the Effects of Trust, Source: Author’s research

System Stability

Citizens’ Voluntary Compliance with the Political System

Trust improves citizen compliance with the whole political system in two ways: by building moral

support for the system and by tiding over gaps in specific support when the outputs of those

institutions fail to fulfil citizen demands. Citizen compliance allows a system to maintain its

monopoly of violence without resorting to violence, or risking collapse.

Affective trust indicates a belief that political leaders are part of the citizen’s ‘moral community’.

This moral community consists of a ‘common interest’. As citizens trust elites, this allows elites to

seek to persuade citizens of policies, rather than forcing deference (Tyler, 1998, pp. 277-278). Where

citizens believe a politician has good motives, they are more likely to take her word on faith (Tyler,

1998, p. 279).

Trust allows for governments to tide over gaps in the capacity of a political system to deliver

acceptable results to citizens. Easton (1965) models a political system as a set of voters, voters which

have policy demands, who install a government to fulfil their wishes. In this model, this government

has a clear incentive to fulfil the demands of a winning majority (or plurality or supermajority) of

citizens, and so governs in their interests. Citizen’s demands are thus satiated. These citizens thus

offer ‘specific’ support to the political system, since it is doing what they say (Easton, 1965).

This model can fail to generate the specific support in two ways: technocratic failure for the winning

group and democratic failure for the losing group. In some cases, elites working for the winning

majority fail. For instance, it may be impossible to engage in a program of social spending in a time

of recession, or impossible to implement a tax cut owing to European Union regulations. This failure

would generate a stress on support. Trust allows people to believe that institutions are indeed

working in their interest. This implies that failures to provide are due to external factors, not a failure

of institutions. As such, they can carry on supporting the system even if they dislike the outcomes.

Where citizens are part of the losing group, elites are not going to fulfil their policy demands (other

than by coincidence). This can generate a stress on their political support for the system. A political

system can seek to mediate their loss in a number of ways. Firstly, systems can seek to mitigate the

extent to which they feel they lost. Systems homogenize population to avoid the creation of winners

and losers in the first place (Easton, 1965, pp. 249-250). Often symbolic representation of minority

concerns, allowing them to be expressed and discussed, further ameliorates the gap (Easton, 1965,

pp. 251-253). Secondly, systems seek to mitigate the extent to which they lost. In some cases, this is

by taking some issues out of the political system, and ‘depoliticise’ those issues to avoid conflict

arising. Some systems take a stronger approach and include losers’ policy preferences (Anderson,

Blais, Bowler, Donovan, & Listhaug, 2007, pp. 120-140). This is done either by manner of consensual

policy-making to include them in national politics, or by allowing them independent political arenas

where they can win by use of federal or confederal structures (Easton, 1965, pp. 250-251). These

responses have been shown to improve support (Anderson & Guillory, 1997).

In some cases, these mediation techniques do not suffice, and governments must fall back on a

more intrinsic level of ‘diffuse’ support. This can be generated by an ideological belief in the

legitimacy of the regime (Easton, 1965, pp. 278-319), patriotic support for the political community

(Easton, 1965, pp. 278-319), or trust. If losers trust an institution, they believe it can be responsive to

their wishes. Trust allows them for foresee a day where the institution delivers their interests. Trust

in an institution can be shown empirically to lead to more support for it (Hetherington, 1998).

Where citizens fail to support an institution, they may see no reason to voluntarily comply with its

edicts. A failure to comply with it either leads to the requirement for coercion, either violent or legal.

A parliament’s power is enforced by other institutions. Citizen resistance to parliament is not

problematic if they otherwise support the government and police who enforce parliament’s laws.

However, parliaments are the body that offers legitimation to the outputs of other institutions, most

notably governments. Governments must find other justifications for laws if they can no longer

assume deference to parliament as sufficient for building citizen support for the legislation (Norton,

2012, p. 526). A government can no longer argue that it is legitimate simply because it holds a

parliamentary majority. As might be expected since it is only one institution in a system, low trust in

parliament not ipso facto worrying in terms of the stability of the whole system. Nonetheless, it may

indicate that the structural conditions for overall system stability are shaky. Trust in parliament is

not necessary for the preservation of support, although it is sufficient.

Contingent Consent

Citizens’ Voluntary Compliance with Administrative Systems

Citizen compliance with government policy is a complex phenomenon. In cases where government

action is unfavourable to citizens, they may often object. For some citizens, ideological interests will

cause them to comply or not comply with government instructions in all cases. In other cases,

practical inability to comply may intrude (Weaver, 2014). However, in other instances, a trust in

government will cause them to comply when they would not otherwise have done so. Levi (1998, p.

88) refers to this as “contingent trust”. She produces the following model for how compliance is

earned by citizen who consent contingently.

Figure 1 - Determinants of Contingent Consent, Source: Braithwaite and Levi (1998, p. 89)

Levi suggests that where these criteria are met, citizens are more likely to “quasi-voluntarily pay

taxes” or be more likely to sign up to go to war, rather than be conscripted (Levi, 1998, p. 92).

Empirical evidence backs up the prior claim, with higher tax payments in more trustworthy regimes

in a variety of contexts (Sacks, 2012; Scholz, 1998). Government can compel citizens to pay their

dues and do the duties in other ways. These mechanisms are often costly. Citizens are more likely to

comply with government demands without excessive enforcement costs. This reduces transaction

costs: the government can reduce the amount they have to spend on enforcement, which results in

more efficient government for all.

This theory places trust in government at the centre, but can be related to parliaments. In the

instance of policy-making parliaments, where citizens are aware of the institution that a policy

Credible Commitments

Trustworthiness of Government

Fair Procedures Trust by Regulators

Information

Ethical Reciprocity

Compliance

originated in, they may refuse to offer contingent consent to a policy they disagree with if it

originated in the legislature. Where citizens believe that policies are “fair and impartial, and

implemented in a fair and impartial manner” (Linde & Ó Erlingsson, 2013, p. 587), they are more

likely to comply. Hibbing and Theiss-Moore (2001) finds that American citizens’ compliance with

policy correlates only with whether or not they think the law making process if fair, not if they agree

with the ideological stripes of government.

In the instance of policy-influencing parliaments, we see the model places trust in the procedures

that create government policy as important factors. For those who distinguish between parliaments

and government, a lack of trust in the procedures that create government policy indicates a

undercutting of the mechanisms that drive government policy. For those with cruder (but still

differentiated views) that view parliaments as indicative of the wider political class or system, a lack

of trust in parliaments could be indicative of a lack of belief in the capacity of government to be fair,

or the capacity of government to be credible. These could indicate an oncoming lack of trust in

governments.

Inter-Institutional Power

Suspension of Judgement in the Political System

As explained above, a fall in trust may lead to a decline of the ability of institutions to garner

support. In that section, the impact discussed was a fall in system stability. It is the case that most

European systems are broadly stable in nature. However, the wider political support that trust is a

part of is still useful for preserving the role of the institution within the system. Trust in specific

institutions gives those institutions additional support (Hetherington, 1998). This support allows

them to challenge other institutions. This is vital for institutional power checking.

This affects the power of an institution in two ways. Firstly, where institutions lose political support

it is easy to abolish the institution or marginalise its power in the political system. Where citizens

support an institution, its marginalisation by another institution will be seen as an illegitimate power

grab. Where citizens do not support an institution, its marginalisation will likely be seen as a

necessary expedient, and tolerated.

Secondly, and more subtly, it leads to a general demoralisation of the institution. The pool of

potential legislators falls, and the general moral will of legislators under constant attack saps. This

reduces the extent to which legislators are strong enough, or feel strong enough, to challenge other

institutions (Patterson & Caldeira, 1990, pp. 42-43).

Parliaments perform a number of important functions within a system. Most notably, parliaments

offer legitimacy to the wider political system. As discussed above, governments lose a source of

diffuse legitimation without a parliament. Parliaments have important roles in scrutinising

government, legislation and other bodies. Failure to do so will result in it becoming easier for other

institutions to produce suboptimal outputs. Where parliaments and other institutions come into

conflict, parliaments need a degree of trust that they are acting reasonably in order to successfully

challenge the other institution.

Making Difficult Policy

Suspension of Judgement on Administrative Outputs

Studies often treat trust as a currency that political systems spend on difficult policies, sometimes

known as ‘political capital’. This functions in two ways.

Frequently the necessity of passing unpopular legislation is that it has short-term harm whilst

providing long-term benefits. Trivially, parliaments have the legal capacity to pass unpopular

legislation. Their members, however, have political incentives to remain elected officers. In order to

retain their jobs, and pass unpopular legislation, a dose of trust that when politicians say a piece of

legislation does, indeed, have the long-term pay-offs is helpful (Weatherford, 1987, p. 6).

In presidential system, legislatures exist as one veto point, but still require the agreement of other

veto actors to pass their wishes into law. In a parliamentary system, legislatures rely largely on

persuasive power to make policy changes. Where parliaments are untrusted and unpopular, other

politicians will see no reason to listen to their amendments to policy (Niven, 2000, pp. 72-73).

Parliaments will thus find it much harder to pass difficult policy if they are widely untrusted.

Political Transaction Costs

Compliance Mechanisms in the Political System

If citizens do not believe their parliament will comply with their political wishes they may well seek

to remedy this situation. Citizens may demand reasonable and efficacious reforms to the institution

or personnel to make it more trustworthy. However, they may also make poor quality decisions, or

decisions which, whilst rational, have negative knock-on effects.

Firstly, citizens may vote in new MPs they perceive to be trustworthy to their parliaments (Niven,

2000, p. 72; Shields, 2006, pp. 118-126). Parliaments are often complex and unwieldy institutions,

which require a lot of institutional knowledge to use reliably and effectively (Coghill, Lewis, &

Steinack, 2012). Parliaments require a degree of human capital to function well (Donohue & Holland,

2012). Where a ‘throw the bums out’ mentality leads to successive wholesale replacements of the

political elite with inexperienced outsiders, the institution will lose accumulated knowledge and

become deinstitutionalised, thus losing capacity. As a result, the institution will degrade in efficacy.

Secondly, increased transactions costs to democracy can accrue. The transaction costs consist of

new institutional arrangements to improve trust. This is usually done by seeking to improve the

trustworthiness of MPs by creating new opportunities for citizens to punish MPs for wrongdoing.

This may include primaries, devolution (Jennings, 1998), recall elections (Judge, 2013, pp. 734, 738-

740) or transparency laws. In some cases, these mechanisms are simply inefficacious. The debate

over reform often becomes less about the efficacy of any specific institution, and more about the

need to ‘do something’.

In other cases, these reforms may have negative knock-on effects. Term limits are hotly debated.

Where they have any impact at all, they reduce the number of career politicians; an intended effect.

Yet, politicians frequently just seek other office. Term limits destroy institutional memory and

expertise, whilst reducing collegiality and cooperation. They offer challenges for accountability when

lame ducks cannot be sacked, since they are leaving anyway. (Cain & Levin, 1999). Primaries, as a

method of constraining politicians, can create a more ideological politics, where politicians sit

further from the median voter (Altman, 2013).

Accountability mechanisms, even when effective, can still be negative. We can posit a situation

known as a ‘two-level game’. This could occur in a supranational organisation, where governments

need to negotiate with other governments. In order to get the best deal, it is useful to gain an

information advantage over one’s ‘opponents’, for which the optimal negotiation strategy is

frequently to hide one’s prior preferences. Negotiators are thus able to present small concessions as

important, extracting greater concessions from the other side in return. However, the need to hide

one’s preferences also requires hiding them from domestic electorates. As such, improved checks on

power result in worse outcomes for electors. Where citizens have a wider underlying distrust of the

political class engaging in these negotiations, this could force governments to show their hand to

their domestic electorate to prove their good intentions, accidentally showing it also to the other

parties in the negotiation (Scharpf, 2000).

This two-level game does not just occur in supranational organisations. We might imagine a situation

of institutions negotiating between themselves on a matter. Often institutions are designed to check

each other, and the system only functions well only when institutions able to challenge each other’s

power. This is particularly the case where a system is designed to lead to consensual outcomes.

Where an institution is widely distrusted, it may have to reveal its negotiating position in order to

garner the trust of citizens, and is thus unable to act in secret. However, as with the scenario above,

revealing one’s negotiating position weakens the institutions, affecting inter-institutional power

balances.

Administrative Transaction Costs

Compliance Mechanisms in Administrative System

Where citizens believe that a system of government has generated legitimate and fair administrative

systems, they are more likely to expect that the administrative structures that this political system

produces will be fair and reasonable. As such, citizens are less likely to demand cumbersome and

time-consuming appeals processes. Parliaments, as part of the system, build support for the outputs

of the whole system. Parliaments have the specific role of scrutinising legislation to make sure it is

indeed fair, and so build the perception that regime outputs are fair.

Methodology

In order to examine what is happening to this important element of our political system, we have

examined the trends in this factor from two datasets, the European Values Study (EVS) and the

European Social Study (ESS) (European Social Survey, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012; European

Values Study, 1981, 1990, 1999, 2008). These datasets use different coding mechanisms to capture

trust. The EVS uses a four-part Likert scale, whereas ESS uses an eleven part Likert scale. The ESS

scale was recoded to the EVS scale. In order to identify how to match variables, we used the 2008

wave of each survey, the only common survey timeframe. We compared frequencies of responses

within that timeframe, and identified the table below as the most appropriate recoding frame.

ESS Coding EVS Coding

Complete trust A great deal

9 A great deal

8 Quite a lot

7 Quite a lot

6 Quite a lot

5 Quite a lot / Not very much (Random)

4 Not very much

3 Not very much

2 Not very much

1 None at all

No trust at all None at all

Table 1: Recoding Frame, Source; Author’s Resarch

In the case of the response ‘5’, we found that the most comparative recoding came from simply

randomly allocating 50% of 5 responses to ‘quite a lot’ and ‘not very much’.

This has been analysed in a correlation analysis with a number of variables, primarily garnered from

the time-series cross-national dataset collated by Norris (2009).

In order to identify trend patterns, we identified whether trust in institutions was correlated with

time. Cases were analysed within sets, initially states, but later within groups that varied by

institutional set-up. This allowed us to identify how different variables affected the trends. In all

cases, we report on correlations with p<1% were counted as significant. A high significance value

was used due to the quantity of data permitting even a high significance level to retain a high degree

of statistical power. After having identified the initial trend lines, we then examined the overall

trends of states within groups based on institutions. This allows us to identify the factors that tended

to correlate with changing levels of trust in parliament.

We could not use a traditional linear regression as we are trying to identify which factors are

connected with trends, rather than individual variables. As such, we are comparing the trends

against variables, rather than a variable against time. We only report on trends which are statistically

significant, so to distinguish effect size we use Pearson R rather than the traditional p-value.

The countries analysed are: Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy,

Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These were

selected in large part owing to the large amount of important data, but also to include a diversity of

political cultures and institutional set-ups.

Trends in Trust in Parliament

Trust in parliament is falling within Europe. For the tables below a simple linear regression was

completed, comparing trust in the institution (dependent) against time (independent). We used the

full scale of potential trust responses to get more nuanced movement within trust trends. Within our

sample countries, four saw rising trust, three had no significant trend, whilst a majority, eight, had

trust falling at a significant level.

Country Direction Significance (p<0.01)

Belgium Up Yes

Estonia Up No

Finland Up Yes

France Down Yes

Germany Down Yes

Greece Down Yes

Hungary Down Yes

Ireland Down Yes

Italy Up No

Lithuania Up No

Netherlands Up Yes

Portugal Down Yes

Spain Down Yes

Sweden Up Yes

United Kingdom Down Yes

Table 2: Trends in Trust in Parliament in Europe, Source; Author’s Research

This can be compared with other institutions: the traditional three estates of government, legislative

(parliament), executive (civil service) and judicial (legal/justice system and police), with the oft cited

‘fourth estate’ of the media (the press).

Trend Parliament Legal/Justice System Police Civil Service* The Press*

Increased Trust 4 3 11 8 6

No Trend 3 5 1 4 4

Decreased Trust 8 7 3 3 5

Table 3: Trends in Institutions within Sample States, Source; Author’s Research *European Values Survey only

As can be seen, the only institution with a comparable fall-off in trust across Europe is the legal

system. Even within this case the margin of falling trust is a little smaller, about 75% of the size, and

begun from a higher level. In the other cases of the core institutions of Western liberal democracy,

we see rising trust. What accounts for this effect?

Institutions

The institutional set-up in different states does not (typically) change over time. We can compare

the trends within states with different institutional set-ups to identify whether particular institutions

are connected with different trends in trust. This does not constitute a cause-and-effect relationship,

but may identify useful loci of investigation. In this case we used the Norris’ classification of

executive-legisation relations (Norris, 2009) and the IDEA classifications of electoral system (IDEA,

2007).

Institution Type Countries Trend Pearson R

All All Decreased Trust

0.048

Majoritarian Electoral System

France, United Kingdom Decreased Trust

0.056

Combined Electoral System

Germany, Hungary, Italy*, Lithuania Decreased Trust

0.070

Proportional Electoral System

Belgium, Estonia, Spain, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy*, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden

Increased Trust

0.049

Parliamentary Monarchy

Belgium, Spain, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden

Increased Trust

0.044

Parliamentary Republic

Germany, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal

Increased Trust

0.033

Presidential Republic

Estonia, France, Lithuania Decreased Trust

0.138

Table 4: Trends in Trust in Parliament by Institutional Set Up, Source; Author’s Research *Change in system.

There are significant, and differential, trends in trust in parliament by regime type. Two major

mitigating factors should be noted. Firstly, classifying by regime type is not substantially more

predictive than simply not classifying by regime type at all. Within the electoral systems families,

majoritarian systems see as even a fall off in trust as systems as a whole. There is a substantial

difference for combined systems and proportional system, but this raises a paradox: mixed electoral

systems, tend to produce broad representation, even if not perfectly proportional. Why do we see

more consistent decreases in trust in broadly representative systems, but the reverse in the

perfectly representative systems? Are citizens really that sensitive to the precise nature of electoral

formula? If so, why do majoritarian systems not see a strong fall-off?

Parliamentary systems see fairly consistent increases in trust, whereas presidential systems see

more consistent decreases in trust. It would seem that consensus institutions correlate with

increases in trust in parliament. However, given the inconsistencies and small effect size, whilst this

may be part of the explanation, it is insufficient.

Parties are a major way that citizens interact with their political system. The table below uses

Goldner’s count of effective parliamentary parties (Goldner, 2005), which have been divided into

terciles, and Keefer’s maximum polarisation (Keefer & Stasavage, 2003).

Party System Type Countries Trend Pearson R

All All Decreased Trust

0.048

Fewest Effective Parliamentary Parties

Germany*, Spain, France*, United Kingdom, Greece, Ireland, Portugal

Decreased Trust

0.110

Mid Effective Parliamentary Parties

Germany*, France*, Hungary, Ireland, Italy*, Lithuania, Netherlands, Sweden*

Decreased Trust

0.074

Most Effective Parliamentary Parties

Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Italy*, Netherlands, Sweden*

No Trend -

Least Polarised Parties

Estonia, Spain*, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy*, Lithuania, Portugal*

Decreased Trust

0.24

Mid Polarised Parties

Spain*, Finland, Hungary*, Ireland, Italy*, Sweden* Increased Trust

0.37

Most Polarised Belgium, Germany, Spain*, Finland, France, No Trend -

Parties Hungary*, Netherlands, Portugal*, Sweden*

Table 5: Trends in Trust in Parliament by Features of Party System, Source; Author’s Research *States where party systems changed over time.

As can be seen, there is a strong trend amongst states with few parliamentary parties for decreased

trust, which reduces in consistency the most parliamentary parties in the state. Polarisation seems

to have an inconsistent effect.

Parliamentary institutions are more than just executive relations. Parliaments are funded bodies,

and that funding often highly correlates with legislative capacity, over and above the basic

institutional set-up. Using IPU data (Inter Parliamentary Union, 2011) we divided the sample states

into three terciles of funding (other than those for which data was missing).

Funding Tercile Countries Trend Pearson R

All All Decreased Trust

0.048

Least Funding Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania Decreased Trust

0.032

Mid Funding Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden Decreased Trust

0.022

Highest Funding Germany, France, Greece, United Kingdom Decreased Trust

0.092

Table 6: Trends in Trust in Parliament by Funding Tercile, Source; Author’s Research

All categories saw a fall of trust in parliament. Counter-intuitively, the best funded parliaments saw

the highest fall-off in trust.

Outputs

Parliamentary effectiveness has been estimated directly, the Banks legislative effectiveness (Banks &

Wilson, 2014). There are two categories of effectiveness for our sample, ‘partly effective’ and

‘effective’.

Output Category Countries Trend Pearson R

All All Decreased Trust

0.048

Partly Effective France, Greece Decreased Trust

0.053

Effective Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Spain, Finland, United Kingdom, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden

Increased Trust

0.022

Table 7: Trends in Trust in Parliament by Legislative Capacity, Source; Author’s Research

As can be seen, states with less effective legislatures tend to have more strongly falling trust. It

should be noted that as relatively few legislatures were categorised as ‘partly effective’ there is a

strong risk of sui generis factors having affected this outcome.

Changing Citizens

What seems to be the case is that legislatures with more inclusive institutional structures, being

more representative: more proportional, but more importantly, more parties, tend to be more

strongly trusted over time. Conversely, those with majoritarian institutions, and which are exclusive

are less strongly trust over time.

Additionally, the less effective legislatures have become less trust. Yet, there is a paradox. The better

funded legislatures (which we would expect to be more effective) have seen more consistent falls off

in trust. We propose one potential solution to this paradox, which comes from the concept of

institutionalisation. We suggest that legislatures with higher degrees of institutionalisation can seem

distant and closed off from citizens, as they focus on internal processes. Conversely, less

institutionalised parliaments can engage more directly with citizens, and seem more human. This is

consistent with the other finding that open institutions see rising trust, or less consistently falling

trust.

It is important to remember that these are characteristics relative to trends, rather than the

absolute level of trust. Given that institutional structures are not changing over time, why do citizens

seem to react to these institutional structures without a change?

We propose what is changing are citizens. We propose citizens are paying increased attention to

parliament. Frequently citizens fail to distinguish between parliament and government. In the

European Social Survey, citizens rankings of trust in parliament on a 11-point Likert scale very rarely

differ by more than two. Between the four estates of government discussed above, respondents to

the European Values Survey most often had no difference between their confidence in legislatures

and government, versus any other institution, based on the four-point Likert scale used in that

survey.

Difference in Trust in Government and Parliament Percent Cumulative Percent

0 27% 27%

1 31% 57%

2 20% 77%

3 11% 89%

4 6% 94%

5 4% 98%

6 1% 99%

7 1% 99%

8 0% 100%

9 0% 100%

10 0% 100%

Table 8: Difference in Trust in Government and Parliament, Source; (European Social Survey, 2002,

2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012).

Difference in Confidence: Parliament-Government

Difference in Confidence: Parliament-Legal System

Difference in Confidence: Parliament-The Press

Difference Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

0 62% 62% 51% 51% 48% 48%

1 34% 96% 41% 92% 43% 91%

2 4% 100% 7% 99% 8% 99%

Table 9: Difference in Confidence in Parliament and Other Institutions, Source; (European Values

Study, 2008)

Citizens have become more attentive to politics over time. Using the sixth wave of the European

Social Survey, we analysed the relationship between interest in politics, and trust in parliament,

satisfaction with the government, and the absolute difference between the two. In the table below

we complete three simple linear regressions of the relationship between variables, and report the

standardised beta and significance.

Dependent Variable Independent Variable Standardised Beta Significance

Trust in Parliament (Higher more trust)

Interest in Politics (Higher is more interest)

0.283 0.000

Satisfaction with Government (Higher is more satisfaction)

0.174 0.000

Absolute Difference Between Prior Variables

0.018 0.003

Table 9: Impact of Attention to Politics in Differential Assessments of Parliament and Government

Whilst we lack data to test this hypothesis in time-series, we propose that since we know that

awareness of parliament as distinct from government is correlated with interest in politics, which

has increased, this may explain the fact that views on parliament have developed over time. We

propose that citizens have started to react more strongly to the institutional set up in parliament by

virtue of being more aware of the existence of parliament as an institution that is meaningfully

different from its close neighbour: the government.

Conclusion

Part of the story of the fall of trust in the institution of parliament across Europe comes to increased

citizen political awareness. We believe that citizens are becoming more aware of parliament as a

body independent of government. As such, citizens are becoming more cogniscent of their

parliamentary structures, and reacting appropriately. It is well established that consensus

institutions see lower levels of trust Lijphart (1999), but we have shown that this applies dynamically

as well. This has important implications for public awareness and image management projects by

parliaments. Increased transparency and awareness may be actively counter-productive if

institutions are not appealing to citizens.

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