Description
Research has commonly acknowledged the importance of trust in political institutions in building towards democratic satisfaction. Two approaches to political trust relationships inform this research. One focusses more on the trust a specific stakeholder invests in a particular trustee, and thus the reasons why the stakeholder chooses to trust. The other emphasises the relationality of the stakeholders. Common to both of the approaches is the notion that political trust is distinct from social trust; that is, the causes for low levels of political trust are different to the causes for social trust.
However, the so-called "boom" of the phenomenon affective polarisation in research has called this distinction into question. By not only linking political identities and social identities but also connecting the polarisation of these interrelated identities to affect, rather than political ideology, the emergence of affective polarisation demands us to at least consider how we account for building trust in political institutions, against the backdrop of decreasing political trust in Europe. This presentation argues that Northern Ireland provides a salient case-study to examine this dynamic. In Northern Ireland, the functioning of the devolved political institutions is primarily investigated through the lens of the Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal that established them. The post-conflict conceptualisation of the political institutions reflects an area where political and social identities have been commonly recognised as connected. Just as political innovation was necessary to achieve this post-conflict political arrangement, so too can this innovation extend to inform our understanding of political trust more broadly today.
