Dissatisfied with politicians and democracy ? The effect of trust in political actors on individual satisfaction with democracy in Austria

Abstract

In recent years, more and more civil society actors have lamented over the decline of satisfaction with democracy in Austria, and have attributed this decline most prominently to the decline of trust in individual political actors, which are perceived as corrupt and scandal-laden. This article examines that assumption by discussing fundamental literature in Political Culture research and by testing hypotheses derived from the discussion with data sets from the European Social Survey 2002-2008. It concludes that the assumption should be challenged as the aggregate satisfaction with democracy does not decline significantly over the years and as individual satisfaction with democracy cannot be explained predominantly by citizens' trust in individual political actors.