ABSTRACT
According to Robert Putnam’s ‘bowling alone’ thesis, the increased levels of political disaffection to be found in some Western democracies have their origins in the decline of social trust and social networks of modern society. As the opening chapter of this volume points out, social trust is the most important component of a broad syndrome of values, attitudes, and behavioural patterns that are indispensable antecedents of political confidence and other civic attitudes. It quotes Putnam (2000: 137) as saying, ‘. . .people who trust others are all-round good citizens’. This chapter, therefore, is about the relationship between social trust and political confidence. It deals with social trust because it is a key component of social capital, and perhaps the best single indicator and measure of it. It deals with confidence in parliament because this is a good indicator of political disaffection, defined as a set of critical attitudes towards the institutions of government. Indeed, parliament (or whatever the legislative assembly is called) is the main representative body in a democracy, and so declining confidence is a serious matter. Confidence in parliament is about something deeper and more fundamental than the more volatile measure of trust in particular governments or politicians, and so it is a good measure of political disaffection.
