Socialist party won the 2004 elections after supporting the anti-war campaign.
Therefore, this report argues that while there was a clear lack of trust due to the
government's policy surrounding the Iraq War, the reason people in general
chose a legal, conventional way to express their political participation and their
anger was because there was still general trust in the institution. However, as
Walgrave et al argued and as seen in Figure 5, there was a rather high degree of
distrust. As a result, unlike Watergate, the Iraq war protests were less
institutionalised, leading to a shift away from the most traditional forms of
participation, such as voting, but it remained legal, as opposed to the sit-ins,
which began to take an unconventional-illegal direction. This can be seen by trust
in the institution of government remaining somewhat consistent during the early
2000s, as shown in Figure 5.
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