The nonlinear relationship between political trust and nonelectoral political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes

Objective Citizens use nonelectoral means of political participation along with electoral ones. However, we expect that engaging in nonelectoral political participation (NEPP) is quite dependent on the legitimacy of the state and its institutions, as well as the regime type. This article explores the relationship between NEPP and political trust (PT), which can indicate the legitimacy of such institutions. Method We utilize the seventh wave of World Values Survey to test such relationships in countries classified as democratic and nondemocratic following the Freedom in the World Index. We hypothesize that in democratic countries there is an inverted U‐shaped curvilinear relationship between PT and NEPP. We also hypothesize that there would be a negative relationship between PT and NEPP in nondemocratic countries. Result The analysis of the data confirms the first hypothesis, which is our main contribution. We also found that the negative relationship in the second hypothesis exists and is linear. Conclusions The findings indicate that respondents in each set of countries interpret trust and participation differently. In democracies, citizens engage in NEPP when they have a medium level of trust in political institutions, and in other regimes, citizens take that risk only when their mistrust of the institutions of the regime falls below a certain level.