Trust in Transition: Culturalist and institutionalist debate reflected in the democratization process in the Czech Republic 1991-2008
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378025%3A_____%2F19%3A00508342" target="_blank" >RIV/68378025:_____/19:00508342 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004390430_008" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004390430_008</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004390430_008" target="_blank" >10.1163/9789004390430_008</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Trust in Transition: Culturalist and institutionalist debate reflected in the democratization process in the Czech Republic 1991-2008
Original language description
On the basis of the discussion between cultural and institutional theories, and taking into account the specific development in post-communist countries, we study three elements of the democratic system - specifically, social trust, institutional trust, and systemic trust (legitimacy of democracy). Using data from the European Values Study, conducted in 1991, 1999 and 2008, we analyze the roots of institutional trust and systemic trust (i.e. popular support for democracy) in the three distinct stages of transition in the Czech Republic. First, our analysis demonstrated no significant relationship between social trust and civic participation (both conventional and unconventional), which confirms the critique of the contemporary neo-Tocquevillian theory of social capital. Second, the cultural theory argument that institutional trust is exogenous is somewhat valid because the data showed at least a weak relationship between social trust and institutional trust. However, this weak relationship supports more the so-called institutional theories which understand institutional trust as politically endogenous, i.e. shaped primarily by political factors. Third, we believe that the association between legitimacy and the two other types of trust is a crucial one. Our results prevent us from either definitively confirming or fully rejecting the cultural hypothesis that trust plays a role in the democratic system in the Czech Republic. However, we conclude that links between the different elements of the Czech Republic’s democratic system can be better explained using institutional theories, according to which the functioning of democracies does not essentially depend on a high level of institutional trust. We conclude that new regime legitimacy is somewhat conditioned by its performance, mainly political, which affects citizens’ satisfaction with the working of the system, but this fact does not automatically depreciate the political system as such.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
50401 - Sociology
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/EF16_013%2F0001796" target="_blank" >EF16_013/0001796: CSDA Research ? Research programme of the Czech Social Science Data Archive: The participation of the Czech Republic in the International Social Survey Programme, Research on Data Quality and Data Sources</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)<br>I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2019
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Trust in Contemporary Society
ISBN
978-90-04-34880-6
Number of pages of the result
34
Pages from-to
104-137
Number of pages of the book
270
Publisher name
Brill
Place of publication
Leiden
UT code for WoS chapter
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