Multidimensional political trust and its effects on political activism in nondemocracies: Findings from a concept-driven clustering method

Abstract

Building on a conceptual distinction between trust in commitment and trust in competence, this study develops a fourfold typology of political trust. It then assigns respondents from a World Values Survey module conducted in 13 nondemocracies to those trust types using a clustering process guided by their corresponding ideal types. The results show that respondents reporting the same level of trust in government can belong to different trust types. Moreover, respondents from two trust types are particularly likely to engage in activism: one includes commitment trusters, who have high trust in government commitment but low trust in its competence, and the other includes those with low trust in both dimensions. This study effectively categorises respondents into conceptually derived trust types, reveals the effects of political trust on political participation in nondemocracies, and illustrates the value of constrained clustering for measuring multidimensional constructs based on a priori theoretical conceptualisation.

Keywords

constrained clustering multidimensional constructs nondemocracies political participation political trust typology

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