(Dis)Trust in Institutions in Slovenia in a Time Perspective. Are the Armed Forces Different?

Trust in institutions, including the armed forces, is a muti-dimensional concept, but trust is mostly a good, a desirable thing for institutions and citizens. However, differ from each other, some serve as representative institutions (parliament, president of the state, political parties) while others are more security oriented (police and armed forces). Scholars have employed number of clusters of factors to explain trust in institutions and its trends.

We will compare the trends of trust in representative institutions vs. armed forces and analyse the importance of several clusters of factors, ranging from individual (education, socioeconomic status, cognitive skills...), institutional to more systemic (social and economic conditions in the country) for each of the two types of institutions.

However, as researchers have found that broader contexts are also important we will also include this cluster of factors in our longitudinal study of trust in the armed forces (e.g. membership in a wider alliance, war in the country or in neighboring countries, participation in peace-making or peace-keeping missions). Since armed forces can have also societal-oriented role, we will also include such context as potentially important explanation of trust in this institution (armed forces can be used in critical events, like huge floods, sleets or fires).

Slovenia can serve as an interesting case study as it is a small country that has undergone many changes – from a country with socialist past, compulsory military service, with large army in Yugoslavia and a rather specific organization of armed forces (national army and specific teritorially based forces) and short war at the beginning of 1990s to NATO member state, with professional military service. It is also a country in which representative institutions have been among least trusted institutions, but what about the armed forces?