Erosion of confidence in thirty European democracies / Mattei Dogan -- Political mistrust in Latin America / Timothy J. Power and Giselle Jamison -- Political mistrust in Southeast Asia / William Case -- Political scandals / Sighard Neckel -- Norway: trust among elites in a corporatist democracy / Trygve Gulbrandsen -- France: political mistrust and the civil death of politicians / Mattei Dogan -- Nigeria: trust your patron, not the institution / Jean-Pascal Daloz -- Argentina: economic disaster and the rejection of the political class / Frederick C. Turner and Marita Carballo -- How civil war was avoided in France / Mattei Dogan.
Note
Print version record.
Summary
Annotation This book, prepared under the hospices of the ISA research committee on Comparative Sociology, focuses on a worldwide phenomenon: political mistrust, observable in almost all countries, in established democracies and in authoritarian regimes. But ubiquity does not mean uniformity. The diversity of political regimes generates a wide diversity of forms and intensities of mistrust. It seems inherent even in the advanced democracies and in semi-democracies, where citizens are better prepared and more prone to criticize the dysfunctions of institutions and condemn the misconduct of politicians. Political mistrust is greatly nourished in many countries by a wide practice of public corruption. Of particular sociological interest is the vulnerability of political elites and of their frequent condemnation to "civil death."