The flip side of trust
Typology of political distrust and theoretical framework
Keywords:
political distrust, political trust, critical citizenAbstract
This article studies the concept of political trust through an analysis of its counter-concepts. Political distrust is understudied and under-theorized even though it has been a central idea in political theory for centuries. Previous studies have pointed out that political trust varies accor- ding to its target: it can been focused on the democratic ideal, political system, or political actors. Distrust or mistrust, on the contrary, has been treated only as a privation of trust without further analysis of its target. We argue that providing a typology of political distrust can deepen our understanding of democracy. The article provides a short history of distrust in political theory and defines distrust and its related concepts. We also provide a typology of distrust’s democratic effects through an ideal type de- mocratic citizen in liberal democracies. The result is a four-fold typology based on ideal types of distrusting democratic citizen. The article asserts that political distrust holds understudied potential for democracies.
