I

There is an increasing fascination among political scientists with the concept of anti-politics, an apparently growing sentiment of distrust with existing political institutions. It may be worth recalling then, that distrust in politics has economic roots. Bluntly, the economically marginalised do not trust politicians and this makes sense- if you’re not doing so well out of society, you will not trust those who run it.

In the European Social Survey dataset there seems to be a very strong relationship between distrust in government and politicians and income. Here’s percentage with no trust in politicians versus income decile:

When we look at people’s own sense of how they’re doing, the relationship becomes even more stark:

From left to right: 1. Living comfortably on present income 2. Coping on present income 3. Difficult on present income. 4. Very difficult on present income.

II

How does this all relate to rising anti-political sentiment assuming, as the political scientists tell us, that there is rising anti-political sentiment? Well, let’s consider the relationship between trust in politicians at a country level and Gini index- a measure of inequality. The relationship is a whopping -.49, the greater the inequality, the less the trust in politicians. So generally speaking, countries trust politicians less when the gini-index is higher, and individuals trust them less when they are having difficulty coping with their finances. Could rising economic tension and difficulty explain rising anti-politics?

It’s hard to say. The main argument against is pretty decisive: there’s not really a trend of rising inequality in Europe in the main as measured by the Gini coefficient, and GDP growth continues as always. Still though, I can’t help but think that there might be something here- the relationship at a time between various forms of economic stress and anti-political sentiment is really strong, so maybe something related to economic stress is explaining the relationship over time? Perhaps something to do with changing work patterns, or perhaps something to do with the perception of one’s situation? If people’s feelings about their own situation were becoming less optimistic, that might drive a trend even if the ‘real’ situation were not much changed, or was changed in a way which doesn’t really show up in these statistics.

Something to mull over.