Abstract
Legitimacy is the voluntary recognition of political authority, which plays an important role in the stability and governance of political systems. At the system level, it is strongly conditioned by individual legitimacy attitudes at the micro level. The goal of our presentation is to illustrate and understand
- How different objects of political support are constructed and interrelated (trust, satisfaction, and legitimacy beliefs)?
- How strongly local and national political attitudes toward objects influence each other?
- What individual factors ultimately influence local and national legitimacy beliefs?
To measure these relationships, we used survey data collected in the project to first operationalize the constructs of satisfaction with authority, trust in institutions, and legitimacy attitudes at the local and national levels. Methodologically, we use a confirmatory factor analysis and OLS regression.
Key Findings
- Higher satisfaction with local than with national authorities, and greater trust in local than in national institutions, while mean differences in legitimacy attitudes vary
- Strong correlations between the concepts of trust and satisfaction and legitimacy beliefs
- Strong correlations between local and national levels for trust, satisfaction, and legitimacy beliefs
- Hardly any systematic influences by individual factors on legitimacy beliefs when controlling for satisfaction and trust as influences on legitimacy