Paper short abstract:

This paper examines citizens' trust in political institutions and support for democracy as a function of key individual-level variables (interpersonal trust and evaluations of regime performance) and of how they interact with the urban-rural divide. It draws on Afrobarometer data.

Paper long abstract:

Strong theoretical assumptions link trust (political and social) to democratic politics. Trust is as necessary requirement of democratic regime stability and effectiveness, but is certainly reinforced by democracy and good governance. Studies focusing on western countries find strong empirical correlations between interpersonal trust, trust in political institutions, and overall democratic endorsement. What about the African context? To what extent trust in political institutions and support for the democratic regime result from citizens' levels of interpersonal trust or are, otherwise, merely the product of the ways in which citizens evaluate the outputs of the political system? Furthermore to what extent citizens' levels of trust and support for democracy vary as a function of territorial cleavages? This paper examines these questions, drawing on Afrobarometer data (round 5) which includes 51587 interviews with individual citizens in 34 African countries. The aim is to carry out a multilevel analysis which will control for important macro-level variables (e.g. urban population) and to how they interact with key independent variables (interpersonal trust, and evaluations of regime performance) to explain trust in political institutions and support for democracy. I argue that these are relevant questions to be surveyed a quarter century after the inception of the democratic opening in the continent. Even though there are instances of democratic reversal and of authoritarian resilience the move towards democratization has happened in most countries. This makes relevant to survey the sources of democratic support and of political trust in Africa.