Irresponsive Political Distrust: Evidence from Latin America

Political trust has been traditionally conceived as an unstable and volatile attitude that changes over time, mainly in response to institutional performance (Levi & Stoker, 2000; Uslaner, 2018). Accordingly, political trust longitudinal change would have a short-term and transitional character, reflecting assessments of the political and economic scenario.

This perspective is disputed by those who suggest that a particular dimension of political trust could be more structural, representing a less reversible trend. Van der Meer & Van Erkel (2023) propose distinguishing between two types of political distrust. On the one hand, there is a "critical distrust", in which political trust may decline in direct response to the declining performance of political institutions. On the other hand, there would be another form of distrust that does not change in line with contextual factors, appearing disconnected from institutional performance. This "irresponsive distrust" may, for example, follow a descending trend even during periods of economic recovery, suggesting more profound problems of alienation and disaffection with democracy.

To distinguish these two types of distrust, Van der Meer and Van Erkel (2023) have proposed a method based on residual analysis. These residuals represent the portion of variance that does not respond to the main performance predictors and can be interpreted as irresponsive distrust. Therefore, examining their direction, trend, duration, and relative size is crucial to comprehending the type and magnitude of political disaffection in each country and determining the scope of its consequences.

We apply this novel method to analyze political trust trends in Latin America using LAPOP surveys. The results show that the nature and depth of distrust varies between Latin American countries, raising new questions about the causes of structural distrust and its potential scope.