Vertrouwen en participatie: van het één komt het ander

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate how generalized trust levels of members of district councils, village councils, and advisory councils on health and social affairs affect how they experience the quality of participatory democracy in these councils. Drawing on literature on generalized trust and using a framework for measuring the quality of participatory democracy on five different dimensions, a multivariate regression analysis was performed using data from the Local State Society Relations survey in The Netherlands. It was found that generalized trust positively affects how council members experience the content, process, effectiveness, and use of resources of their council. However, no significant effect was found for generalized trust on the communication dimension. Also, an independent samples t-test was performed, comparing the data with Dutch respondents on the European Social Survey. The results indicated that the demographics of the members of district councils, village councils, and advisory councils on health and social affairs are not representative for the rest of the Dutch population.