Abstract
Over the past decade, a decline of democratic legitimacy has been observed in many countries across different world regions. The decline has many facets and borderlines due to international crises, the rise of populism, social polarization and institutional weaknesses. Against this background, the paper focusses on aspects of social and institutional trust as it relates to these developments on a worldwide basis. The analyses rely on the comprehensive database provided by seven waves of the World Values Surveys (WVS), an approach that makes it possible to offer a differentiated picture both by world regions and various political system types (Inglehart et al. 2015). The final section assesses the current situation in the context of an increased system competition between liberal democracies and autocratic regimes.
Keywords
Introduction
Questions of legitimacy (or the lack of it) are at the core of any political system. These have both normative (why should people obey their rulers) and empirical (why do people obey) dimensions. The first one is based, in the last resort, on (contested) ontological (religious, philosophical) beliefs. Traditional rulers and monarchies often claim a divine origin of their position and even the term charisma in Max Weber’s sense refers to a ‘gift of God’ (Weber, 1922: 124). Contemporary philosophers (Beetham, 2013; Habermas, 1996; Rawls, 2001) refer to justifications like provision of justice, security, promotion of the common good, protection of basic individual human and social rights. Ideally, such concepts could be realized in different types of regimes, for example, a benevolent monarchy, other traditional forms of rule as councils of elders or a secular Rechtsstaat.
Democratic legitimacy, in addition, is based on responsiveness of the rulers (established by regular free and fair elections) and responsibility towards their citizens including basic individual and minority rights (safeguarded by an independent judiciary, pluralist media and an active civil society). Over the last decade in many countries and different world regions a decline of democratic legitimacy could be observed. This has many facets and borderlines due to international crises, the rise of populism, social polarizations and institutional weaknesses. Such borderlines and their interactions with other sub-systems can be illustrated in the following model (Figure 1):
Interactive model of democratic political systems.
Here, the cultural, social and economic sub-systems, originally derived from Parsons’ (1951) AGIL (Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, Latent pattern maintenance) scheme, interact and set the scene for the political system, which derives its main inputs from these spheres and their distinct features. At the meso-level, these inputs are aggregated and mediated in specific ways by interest groups, parties, media etc. and then ‘processed’ by the central political system as the overall decision-making unit. Its outputs are fed back to the respective sub-systems by the usual administrative structures and complete the cycle, which is repeated over and over again in a dynamic sense. At the same time, all this is embedded in the encompassing international system, with which all sub-systems interact at different levels.
In this way, various borderlines and problem areas of democratic legitimacy can be located as they interact with other parts of this complex model. For example, a threat to the rule of law and an independent judiciary, as recently in Hungary or Poland, can be identified with its possible repercussions for other parts of the political system. The same applies for restrictions of independent media or an independent electoral commission, which put the entire democratic process at risk. Other aspects such as increasing social inequality, social polarization or exclusion of significant ethnic, religious or similar minorities are more of a long-term nature, but with equally pernicious effects.
In this paper, the focus is on social and institutional trust, that is, aspects of the cultural sub-system as they relate to recent worldwide developments. For this purpose, we employ the comprehensive data base of the seven waves of the World Values Surveys (WVS) to assess these phenomena. A differentiated picture by world regions and different political system types becomes apparent in this way. This challenges the prevailing perspective that democratic backsliding is a worldwide phenomenon with similar causes and consequences (Bermeo, 2016; Freedom House, 2020; Haggard and Kaufman, 2021; V-Dem report, 2022).
The conclusion examines different legitimation strategies to overcome current problems in the context of an increased system competition between liberal democracies and autocratic regimes.
Conceptual clarifications
The broadest and widely accepted definition of legitimacy refers to ‘rightful power or authority’ (Beetham, 2011: 1414). What is rightful, however, in a normative sense is already part of the contested aspects of the concept. This is the domain of religion, ideology and political philosophy. In the end, it is the belief in such rightfulness and the widespread acceptance by those who are subject to political power which effectively constitute the legitimacy of any regime. In his original formulation, Weber distinguished three ideal-typical types of legitimacy: The traditional refers to a religious or mythical origin of a regime and its mostly passive acceptance. The rational-legal is based on more recent political-philosophical foundations, as advanced by Immanuel Kant (1788), who, for example, established legal procedures, and a willing acceptance by the population. The ‘charismatic’ emphasizes the persuasiveness and popularity of a particular political leader and his/her historical role in critical moments, as exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi in India at the time of independence or Nelson Mandela during the transition from the Apartheid regime in South Africa. The latter type, by its very nature, is the most short-lived one and must be supplemented by other elements in the longer run. In reality, some mixed forms of these types and their ways of acceptance occur.
In today’s world, we can distinguish six major types of regimes according to their source of authority, form of law, ends of government and source of public affirmation (Table 1):
Legitimating elements of contemporary regime types.
Source: Adapted from Beetham (2011: 1421).
Such a typology does not, of course, capture all existing variations of such regimes, and the examples given are just indicative.
For a regime to be considered legitimate, a certain congruence must exist between its source of authority, the normative dimension and the mode of public affirmation, the empirical dimension. Obviously, these are matters of degree and both processes of legitimation and de-legitimation may occur. In this respect, it is useful, once more, to take a look at the complex system model above to identify problem areas and borderlines of legitimacy derived from the respective sub-systems and affecting the input, ‘throughput’ (effectiveness of the central political system) or output (overall performance) sides.
Legitimation refers to the various procedures and processes by which legitimacy can be established or maintained. On the input side of political systems these consist of broad (often passive) support, participation in elections and/or activities of civil society. On the output side the overall performance of a regime and the satisfaction of basic needs and demands are important. Feedback mechanisms then translate this through the other (social, economic, cultural) sub-systems and maintain or weaken legitimacy.
If not based on outright and complete repression as in totalitarian systems or military dictatorships (e.g. North Korea, Myanmar, Eritrea), regimes seek to solidify and enhance their popular support. The most common strategy consists of assuring internal and external physical security and satisfying basic economic needs (Gerschewski, 2023). Cooptation of representatives of major social groups in clientelist networks is very frequent. The personal appeal of political leaders can also play a role.
In democracies, the institutional setup can be improved (Luhmann, 1989), e.g. allowing for broader forms of political participation and more direct forms of democracy (referenda, citizens assemblies, etc.). An open and pluralist public sphere and critical discourse is also essential for democracies (Habermas, 1996). However, the arrival of the social media, AI and similar technological developments makes the dissemination of fake news much easier and less controllable concerning the trustworthiness of the respective sources. Finally, symbolic politics can attempt to influence public opinion and support. If this is only a ‘make-belief’, however, instead of really implementing policies, this can backfire as well (Lauth, 2020: 843).
David Easton (1965) further distinguished specific (satisfaction of material needs) and diffuse support (long-term general acceptance based on habituation). In principle, this can apply also to the ‘milder’ forms of authoritarian regimes. Dieter Fuchs (2007) specified this for democratic systems in a hierarchical model distinguishing the levels of broad popular commitment to democratic values, support for the democratic regime and support for the respective incumbents, also indicating feedbacks between them both in a bottom-up or top-down manner. This is illustrated in Figure 2.
Hierarchical model of democratic system culture.
Empirical findings
Such values and attitudes can be assessed empirically, for example, by the WVS or the various regional Barometers. The actual measures and instruments employed, however, have been and still are a subject of controversy (Mattes, 2018). Actual behaviour such as demonstrations, protests and violent conflicts must be considered as well. For example, in a recent book (Van Beek, 2022) we looked at different aspects of legitimacy and the support for democracy employing Integrated Values Surveys (WVS and EVS combined to IVS) data for the major world regions. The following table and figures are based on this study
Political legitimacy
Table 2 shows the development of different aspects of legitimacy over time ordered from specific to more general: We distinguish four levels of political support:
Support for political authorities: Confidence in political parties.
Support for governmental institutions (government, parliament, civil service, police).
Positive evaluation of system performance: Perception of the political system’s democratic quality and perceived protection of human rights.
Support for the ideal of democracy: Evaluation of democracy and the more demanding index support for democracy, measured as the difference between the evaluation of democracy as a system of government minus the higher score for either an autocratic or a military regime. The latter index has been recommended by various authors, for example, Klingemann (1999) and Diamond and Morlino (2005).
Political legitimacy.
Source: Hoffmann-Lange and Berg-Schlosser (2022: 132).
National pride is included in the analysis here because questions of cultural and national identity – whose compatibility with democracy is tenuous – have assumed an increasing role in recent years (Fukuyama, 2018)
Some general trends can be observed here: Confidence in political parties has declined, confidence in governmental institutions has remained stable, democratic quality declined somewhat. By contrast, respect for individual human rights has increased. The general evaluation of democracy has remained positive at a high level. When we employed a more demanding indicator, however, subtracting the expressed preference for an autocratic or military regime from this general evaluation, as advocated by Diamond (2008) for example, the actual support for democracy declined. National pride, as a more general measure of a person’s identification with the home country increased somewhat. It must be noted, however, that in these cumulated surveys, Western democracies are over-represented.
A differentiation by major world regions shows a more revealing picture (Figure 3):
Support for democracy.
Here, the blue bars (actual support) are highest in the Western countries and significantly lower in the other regions (some of them with only a few cases included).
Social and institutional trust
Among basic political attitudes, trust in fellow citizens and major institutions plays a particular role and is related to some aspects of political legitimacy. As emphasized by Putnam (1993), for example, social trust influences many spheres of daily life and can be accumulated (or not) as political capital over centuries. This can be beneficial both for economic development and civic engagement (in Northern Italy, for example, in Putnam’s study as contrasted to the South). Not rarely, however, societies are strongly divided by religious, ethnic, class and similar lines, and trust is extended only to members of one’s close community. In extreme cases, this can lead to strong social and political polarization as in Chile, Poland, Turkey and the U.S. in our recent study, again indicating systemic interactions and possible regional and global consequences. Violent conflicts on this basis can also persist for centuries and shape the collective historical memory (as in Northern Ireland).
The results for interpersonal trust by world region are depicted in Figure 4:
Interpersonal trust.
As becomes evident, interpersonal trust is quite high and relatively stable in the Western democracies and East Asia. The other regions have lower levels and show recent declines, in particular in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region and Latin America. The high values achieved in the East Asian countries indicate that their relatively high interpersonal trust levels can be considered as compensating for the low support for democracy found in that region. Interpersonal trust provides a solid basis for collective action and thereby may contribute to stabilizing democracy against anti-democratic actions of governments. This result contrasts with South(-East) Asia that shows a considerable increase from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, followed by a steep decrease afterwards.
More specifically, institutional trust concerns the political system as such and its major branches such as the legislature, executive and judiciary and the welfare and security apparatus (education, health and social security systems, the bureaucracy, the police, the military, etc.). For this purpose, we used V-Dem’s relatively simple and straightforward classification distinguishing between ‘closed autocracies’ (including absolutist monarchies, military regimes and single-party dictatorships) and ‘electoral autocracies’ (with regular but not really free and fair elections) on the one hand, and ‘electoral democracies’ or ‘polyarchies’ (where important liberal elements are missing) and ‘liberal democracies’ on the other (Luehrmann et al., 2018). Development of confidence in institutions by regime type is shown in Figure 5.
The development of confidence in institutions by regime type.
Here, closed autocracies (such as Saudi Arabia, Iran or China) have considerably lost confidence recently, but still at a high level. Electoral autocracies (with sham elections as in Belarus or Russia) show a similar picture. Confidence in electoral democracies (with strong deficits as in South Africa or India) has declined strongly. Trust in institutions in consolidated liberal democracies has remained relatively stable.
Conclusions: borderlines of legitimacy
As perceived by the respondents to the WVS over the last decades, confidence in political parties has generally declined, confidence in existing institutions remained stable and national pride increased somewhat. The assessment of democratic regimes and values reveals a mixed picture: On an abstract level, the positive evaluation remained high and respect for human and individual rights increased. By contrast, the democratic quality of regimes declined and the actual support deviated strongly when, in addition, preferences for a military regime or an authoritarian leader were expressed as well. Only in the Western democracies did this support remain strong overall. When checked for interpersonal trust as a major source of legitimation and social capital, only the Western democracies and East Asia showed high values. The other regions exhibit considerable decline, often related to changes in personal well-being. Closed and electoral autocracies had considerable declines in institutional confidence, but still enjoy broader acceptance as long as they are able to keep the ‘authoritarian bargain’ of providing basic social and economic needs. The recent and fragile democracies suffered mostly in this regard. Only the consolidated liberal democracies, again, maintained a high level. For all such assessments, however, the varying coverage and uneven regional distribution of the WVS surveys must be taken into account. The detailed country and regional chapters in our recent book (Van Beek, 2022) provide a more differentiated account indicating several and more complex borderlines of democratic legitimacy
Other recent studies show that the current worldwide crises have led to a more ambiguous picture even in the longer established democracies. There, a sizable group of distrustful citizens could be identified, too. These are not the ‘critical citizens’ in favour of more and better democracy as described earlier (e.g. Norris, 1999), but they hold ‘illiberal and restrictive attitudes towards minorities and migrants, characteristic of regressive political movements. In a sense, they represent a regressive variant of the “critical citizens”’ (Grande and Gonzatti, 2024). Or, as the title of Pippa Norris’ more recent book suggests: ‘In praise of skepticism: Trust but verify’ (Norris, 2022).
As a more general observation, it can be concluded that traditional regimes have been on the decline faced with demands of increased popular participation and socio-economic modernization (Huntington, 1968). Nevertheless, important sub-national traditional forms of authority persist (e.g. chiefdoms, councils of elders in Sub-Saharan Africa, aristocratic strata in other parts of the world). The fascist and communist types in their original occurrence have been a phenomenon of specific periods of the 20th century (in the interwar period and until the symbolic ‘fall of the wall’ in Berlin in 1989, respectively). Military aggression and weaker economic performance have contributed to their demise. Left-wing and right-wing extremism have also persisted, however, in some forms, the latter being on the increase more recently even in longer established democracies. Contemporary theocracies are an expression of fundamentalist forms of Islam and have been a rare occurrence, but Islamist tendencies can be found in other parts of the Muslim world. Finally, takeovers by the military have also generally been on the decline, but cannot be excluded completely (as recently in the Sahel region). Detailed annual accounts of such developments can be found in the reports of organizations like International IDEA (https://www.idea.int/gsod/gsod) or the ‘Varieties of Democracy’ (V-Dem) project (https://www.v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf). Among the major driving forces for further participation and general human rights has been the empowerment of women and smaller sexual minority groups. The major de-legitimating factor in the other regimes has been the greed and corruption of the incumbents not living up to their own proclaimed normative standards.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
