Trust in Political Institutions and Electoral Accountability: A Political Agency Approach

We analyze the implications of three stylized facts about trust in political institutions for the role of elections in improving discipline, constraining pandering, and improving selection of politicians. First, trust in political institutions (politicians, political parties, and the legislature) has declined in recent years. Second, within countries, there is heterogeneity across citizens in their level of trust in institutions, and third, at the individual level, trust is malleable, especially when young. We add these features to an otherwise standard model of electoral agency. Unlike the standard model, where the quality of the candidate pool is assumed known, citizens are born with imprecise and heterogeneous priors over the quality of the pool, so young citizens learn not only about the incumbent, but also about the pool quality. An increase in precision increases both the discipline and selection effects of elections, whereas an increase in heterogeneity of prior beliefs has the opposite effect. The effect of changes in average trust in the population is generally ambiguous. When candidate entry is modelled, these findings extend to endogenous pool quality. The implications for citizen welfare and civics education are discussed.