Browsing by Subject "political trust"
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(2019)Trust is one the key concepts in analyzing the maintenance of social order and diversity in modern societies. Previous studies have reported that trust correlates, for instance, with higher economic growth, better governance, higher levels of education and subjective wellbeing. However, former Soviet countries face particular problems in developing the habits of trust. These observations of trust call for a more comprehensive and in-depth areal understanding of the concept. The present thesis examines the dynamics of political trust in contemporary Russia, and draws inspiration from W. Mishler and R. Rose’s (2001, 2005) studies of political trust. Mishler and Rose (2001) studied the origins of political trust in post-Communist Eastern European countries in the late 1990s. Their main finding was that while socio-demographic factors explain poorly the variance of political trust in post-Soviet sphere, the individual perceptions of political and economic performance of the institutions correlate significantly with it. Thus, they advance that political trust is a rational response to institutional performance in those countries. In this regard, political trust in Eastern European countries seems to adhere to conditions of the Russian proverb “doverjaj, no proverjaj” (“trust but verify”). This thesis aims to examine how relevant the aforementioned argument is in the context of contemporary Russia. This examination is done by conducting a kind of replicate analysis of Mishler and Rose’s model. Moreover, a critical evaluation of the results of thesis’ model is given by applying recent insights from Russian studies. The data for the thesis’ model are drawn from the third round of the Life in Transition survey (LiTS III). Analyses were performed using principal component factor analysis and ordinary least squares linear regression models. In general, the results of the thesis’s model are consistent with those of Mishler and Rose (2001): the subjective perceptions of political and economic performance of Russian institutions were the most significant domains associated with political trust in modern Russia, whereas socio-demographic factors had only a minuscule effect in shaping it. However, the hypothesis about political trust as a rational response to political and economic performance contradicts with the recent data and research on Russian economy and politics: economy has stagnated or even fallen in Russia during recent years, and, at the same time, Russian domestic policy has become increasingly repressive. These observations suggest that political trust might be a reflection of something else than mere rational response to institutional performance in Russia. On the other hand, the fluctuation of the Russian political trust implies that it presents evaluative attitudes toward institutions, but in the light of the evidence of this thesis, the level of rationality of these evaluative attitudes remains unclear and questionable.
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(2019)Western democracies are facing a complex and a harmful phenomenon because of influence operations on social media. This master’s thesis assesses the connection between Finnish citizens’ political trust and their experienced feeling of threat towards influence operations. It has been discussed in the public that the goal of a successful influence operation is to undermine citizens’ trust towards its democratic institutions and actors. Because there is an insufficient amount of academic research on this topic, the aim of this thesis is to rectify it by revealing the true nature of the link between political trust and citizens’ experience. The theoretical framework consists of Harvard University’s Pippa Norris’ theory of E-democracy. It introduces the virtual political environment in the 21th Century. Harvard University’s Robert D. Putnam’s theory of social capital describes the trends of interpersonal trust in the modern history. Collège de France’s Pierre Rosanvallon’s theory of counter-democracy provides a theoretical bridge between Norris’ virtual political system and influence operations as seen, for example, in the United States’ presidential election in 2016. A survey sample of 1000 participants analyzed in this master’s thesis was originally collected by the think tank Magma in 2017. “Finnish Views on Democracy and Political Issues 2017” sample was collected to describe Finnish citizens’ views on multiculturalism and attitudes towards bilingual policies. However, the sample has more elements in it, for example, citizens’ views on democracy and security policies. Hence an exploratory factor analysis was conducted, and it revealed four latent attitudes from the sample: political trust, resilience and stances towards multiculturalism and minorities. The research was continued by transforming the identified factors to factor scores, meaning new variables. After that a logistic ordinal regression was conducted to provide insight into the relationship between the political trust and Finnish citizens’ views on the threat of influence operations. The connection was not identified between them in this master’s thesis. Other factor scores, resilience and stances towards multiculturalism and minorities had a statistically significant connection with Finnish citizens’ views on the threat of influence operations. This research - contrary to expectations - failed to show a clear relationship between political trust and Finnish citizens’ experienced feeling of threat towards influence operations. It might tell that socio-economic background might be a stronger factor defining the individual’s tendencies to the phenomenon compared to the political trust. Then again, influence operations could impact in a different dimension than where citizens’ affiliations with democratic institutions and actors exist. This topic requires more interdisciplinary research to find the answer to the societal challenges Western democracies are facing with influence operations using social media.
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