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ObjectiveA comprehensive study on the development of political trust is absent. Studies on the socialization effect of the media generally neglect the influence of the media system. This study aims to fill this gap.MethodsUsing a within‐country comparison of two media systems, I estimate the influence of different socialization agents on the development of political trust through hierarchical models of repeated measurements on a representative panel of Belgian adolescents (BPPS 2006–2011, n = 3,025).ResultsNews consumption and a public service broadcasting preference foster political trust within diverse media systems. The socioeconomic status and level of political discussion in the family, an open classroom climate, and classroom instruction about politics also promote political trust.ConclusionsTelevision, the family, and the school are all equally important agents in the development of political trust. It is critical to take the nature of the media system into account when studying how the media affect political trust.

Competing theoretical claims exist in the literature on the effect of proportionality on political trust. To date, empirical studies yielded mixed results. In this paper, we examine a curvilinear effect of the proportionality of election outcomes on political trust using data from the European Social Survey (2006-2009). The findings show that political trust is indeed highest in countries with very proportional as well as in countries with very disproportional election outcomes and lowest in countries that fall in between. Election outcomes that are more fully inclusive and those that provide more accountability can both lead to higher levels of political trust. Next to the proportionality of the translation of votes into seats, this study investigates a broad range of election outcomes that are associated with (dis)proportionality i.e. the effect of the number of parties in elections, parliament and government, voting for the winning or losing party under different levels of proportionality and the clarity of responsibility. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

AbstractThe potential for participatory processes to address deficits in perceptions of legitimacy is strongly debated. This letter discusses how to evaluate the effects of participatory procedures. It argues that participatory processes should not be compared to normative ideals about how citizens should behave, but rather to the status quo of representative decision making. The authors use the example of winner–loser gaps in perceptions of fairness to illustrate the importance of evaluation frameworks, drawing on twelve experiments from the Netherlands and Sweden (total N = 5,352). The study shows that the choice of benchmarks matters substantially for the interpretation of process effects. When comparing participatory processes to the status quo of representative decision making, it finds higher fairness perceptions for a participatory process than for a representative process across all twelve experiments, even when the outcomes are unfavourable.

AbstractObtaining citizens' voluntary compliance with political decisions is a fundamental democratic challenge. Fair treatment by public officials plays a key role in theoretical and empirical studies on citizens' compliance and cooperation. Yet it is unclear whether citizens within different societies react to (un)fair treatment in the same way. Using multilevel structural equation modelling and multilevel regression analysis on the European Social Survey 2010–2 (N = 52,458), this article shows that perceptions of fair treatment by police officers are associated with higher levels of trust in political institutions and in turn stronger compliant and cooperative attitudes of citizens in 27 countries. Yet the link between perceptions of unfair treatment and institutional trust is stronger in countries in which fair behaviour is more prevalent. While fair treatment is often considered to be a universal norm affecting citizens in a uniform way, this article sheds light on important cross‐national variations.