suggestion that high levels of group solidarity may explain why we may see
unconventional participation in cases of low institutional trust.
5). Hypothesis and Methodology
Based upon our discussions of institutional trust, the nature of political
participation and the relationship between the two, we hypothesise that:
The more citizens distrust their institutions, the more likely the more unconventional their political participation becomes.
This will be investigated through four case studies of different political
participation types ranging from most conventional to least conventional, seen
plotted on our conventionality spectrum in Figure 2. Watergate shows a clear
conventional response in a situation of a lack of trust as the change in the nature
of voting that occurred was both legal and institutionalised. This is similar for the
Iraq War protests but as the previous participation section has highlighted, the
response elicited here is less conventional than that of Watergate. The Sit-ins are
a key example of non-institutionalised and illegal participation and this,
alongside the similarly illegal yet more unconventional storming of the Capitol,
will help us to further analyse the true nature of our hypothesis.
Figure 2 - Proposed framework with case studies
59
Made with FlippingBook HTML5