Political Trust in Uneven Territories. Subnational Democracy, Subjective State Reach, and Trust in Elections in Latin América
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.espo.n68a06Keywords:
Political Institutions, Subnational Politics, Democracy, Elections, Political Trust, Latin AmericaAbstract
Research on political trust usually assumes that the quality of political institutions and regime performance is mostly uniform within countries. However, contemporary research on subnational politics reveals that some countries exhibit substantial subnational variation in institutional reach and performance. The argument advanced in this article is that the subnational variation in institutional performance decisively shapes trust in political institutions. This claim is substantiated by studying electoral trust in fifteen Latin American democracies. The data reveals a positive relationship between a subjective measure of the state’s territorial reach and trust in elections. Electoral trust is also conditioned by a country-level measure of subnational democratic evenness. The analysis shows, finally, that the relationship between the individual assessment of the state’s territorial reach and political trust is positively enhanced by subnational democratic evenness. These findings suggest that within-country institutional variation plays a decisive role in shaping political trust and thus merits further research.
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