Political Trust in Early Adolescence and Its Association with Intended Political Participation: A Cross-sectional Study Situated in Flanders

Empirical research on the relationship between political trust and political participation has rarely focused on adolescents. By acknowledging the important role of young people for the sustainability of representative democracies, this study considers a two-dimensional conceptualization of political trust—that is, distinguishing between trust in order institutions (e.g., the police) and trust in representative institutions (e.g., the parliament)—to examine how it relates to several intended acts of legal and illegal political participation among Flemish eight-grade adolescents. Using structural equation modelling on data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016 (n = 2,829), we find that Flemish adolescents with lower levels of trust in representative institutions are more likely to withdraw from political life as adults. Those with lower levels of trust in order institutions, however, have a stronger inclination to use a range of political participation modes, including illegal means.