Apoyo político y confianza social en Europa, 1999-2005factores explicativos en perspectiva comparada

Abstract

This thesis presents a reflection on a very important topic in political science and political culture. It covers the general discussion on political support as research question, how political shapes democratic performance and how supportive attitudes towards institutions and political systems are generated and maintained. This work analyses the concept of political support as a way in which citizens relate to their political systems and as a measure of how citizens identify themselves with their democracies in Europe. The research question is what political support means nowadays, and how European societies articulate their support. What make people from different societies relate differently to their political systems? Which aspects make citizens identify themselves with their political institutions, State, Authorities? Which is the main source of the difference among societies in terms of political support? How strong are these differences on political attitudes in Europe? This thesis works with the idea that extended interpersonal trust is indeed in the origins of supportive attitudes. The presence or absence of interpersonal trust might be also one of the reasons for a strong or weak political support. Two main explanations will be tested in this framework; firstly the effect of cultural aspects such as social trust and value orientations learnt through socialisation, and secondly, evaluation of policy and economic performance. The existence of available data and the amount of literature on the topic, allows this research question to be tested and analysed using data from the European Values Survey, World Values Survey, Eurobarometer and European Social Survey. The period covered by these surveys goes from 1986 to 2005, focusing the main analyses of this work in data from 1999 through 2005.