Rethinking Democratic Disconnect: Ontological Insecurity, Institutional Trust, and Democratic Support Across Generations

Adding to the literature on generational differences in democratic support, this article argues that younger citizens in consolidated European democracies are not inherently less democratic but may be affected differently by the rapid succession of “once‐in‐a‐generation” crises during the past decade, including the Covid‐19 pandemic, war on the European continent, economic volatility, welfare state transformation, and shifting geopolitical relations. We hypothesise that this condition of polycrisis reshapes the experiential foundations of democratic legitimacy. We examine how support for democracy is structured along generationally differentiated pathways, particularly in contexts of growing uncertainty about the future, understood here as ontological insecurity. Drawing on original survey data (the REDIRECT dataset) collected in 2025 across eight European countries (Belgium, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, and the UK), we estimate country fixed‐effects regression models with robust standard errors. The analysis examines how material insecurity and identity‐related insecurity shape institutional trust, perceived societal threat, and democratic support. The findings challenge narratives of a generalised democratic disengagement or disconnect among younger generations. Institutional trust emerges as the principal mechanism linking insecurity to democratic support, whereas perceived societal threat plays only a limited role. Age moderates these relationships: experiences of social denigration are more strongly associated with democratic support among younger respondents, whereas institutional trust becomes progressively more important among older cohorts. Moreover, identity‐related insecurity, operationalised as perceived social denigration, is associated with lower institutional trust but higher democratic support, suggesting that experiences of exclusion may undermine confidence in existing institutions without necessarily weakening attachment to democratic principles.