Politieke steun/ongenoegen gedeconstrueerd Politieke tevredenheid, politiek vertrouwen en politieke verbondenheid

Abstract

In this article, following Stephen Craig’s approach of political support as generic concept, which consists of a set of (un)favourable attitudes to political objects and processes, we investigate, analytically, the structure of political support/discontent. Because of the importance of political trust, we take the general social theories about trust as starting point of the analysis. First, we make a distinction between political identification, political trust and political satisfaction on the basis of objects of support, mode of orientation and time orientation. Second, the instrumental and procedural components of political trust and political satisfaction are distinguished. Third, the relation between political identification, trust and satisfaction is unravelled. Like this, we try to shed light on the complex relationship between citizen and politics as well as the way how citizens evaluate and assess their politicians, political institutions and the political system.