their government supported the war. This is supported by Walgrave et al. when
they stated, "Very high levels of dissatisfaction were found in the nations where
governments were preparing for war or took a supportive stand" (Walgrave, S.,
& Rucht, D., 2010, p. 100). This would lead to conventional uses of political
participation such as protests because citizens did not lose trust in the
government’s overall competency but lost trust in the way the government
handled a specific issue, in this case Iraq. This differs to Watergate as it is slightly
less institutionalised which leads to a slightly less conventional form of political
participation. This is less institutionalised as, whilst still legal, it took place
outside the government sphere.
On the other hand, Walgrave et al. make an argument that contradicts the
argument in this report. They argue that "the more the participants are opposed
to the war and the more dissatisfied they are with their national government’s
policy, the less happy they are with the functioning of democracy in their
country, the less politically effective they feel, and the less trust they have in the
social and political institutions of their country" (Walgrave, S., & Rucht, D., 2010,
p. 108). However, while it is accurate to state that the protests showed a level of
dissatisfaction with government’s policies, it is not necessarily true that it would
translate into less trust in the political institutions of their country. For example,
the UK had some of the largest anti-war protests, yet between the 2001 and
2005 general elections, there was an increase in voter turnout. Figure 5 also
supports this argument, as it shows that "only some time" and "almost never"
levels of trust in government are in line with the average for the period. While
the "most of the time" section did drop compared to what it was in 2002, it is
not significant enough to argue that the Iraq war protests caused huge drops in
institutional trust. In addition, in other countries such as Spain, the opposition
67
Made with FlippingBook HTML5