Democratic values, education, and political trust

Abstract

This article examines the links between education, democratic values, and political trust. Research on education systems as carriers of modern orientations and democratic values worldwide predicts that educated individuals will exhibit more democratic values than less educated ones, regardless of the country’s level of democracy. In the political culture approach, political trust can be understood as a reflection of the congruence or incongruence between individual democratic values and the level of democracy of the political system, which emphasizes trust’s relational character. Integrating these strands of literature, I formulate hypotheses about the mediating effect of democratic values between education and political trust. To test these hypotheses, I employ multilevel models of data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study covering 73 countries. The results show that democratic values partially mediate the effect of education on political trust, but the magnitude of this effect depends on the level of democracy. Analyses also show that, while education is positively associated with democratic values regardless of the country’s level of democracy, this association is much stronger in democratic countries than in non-democratic ones.