9.2). Why did the Event Happen?
The events of Jan 6th, 2021, occurred due to an extreme lack of trust in political
institutions, specifically democracy and the accuracy of the 2020 election results
by Donald Trump supporters. This directly fits in with the hypothesis of this
report whereby the less trust citizens have in political institutions the more
unconventional their participation becomes. This case study is the extreme
example of that whereby the rioters had extremely low trust in institutions and
participated in the most unconventional means. This is demonstrated in Figure
8, where Trump’s supporters have the lowest trust in these institutions
compared to any other group in the US (Boon 2020). Confirming the hypothesis
as the lowest institutional trust resulted in the most unconventional
participation.
We have highlighted that the rioters had a lack of trust in institutions and that
this in turn resulted in the unconventional participation seen. We can propose
that citizens tend to trust institutions when they feel they can effectively
influence the decision making of the government (He & Ma, 2021, p.472). Clearly
Trump’s supporters had a lack of trust in the institution of democracy
surrounding the 2020 election, however they did not have this same issue in
2016 where their candidate was victorious. In this peculiar example, the lack of
trust in the institutions may only apply to a particular element. In this case it was
Trump not winning the election and then pushing the rhetoric that the election
was rigged, promoting a lack of trust in the institution of democracy and for his
supporters to do something. It is difficult to form a conclusion on this as we do
not know how Trump’s supporters will treat future elections.
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