Trust in Political Institutions Through the Lens of Politicians: the Case of the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is one of the countries where trust in political institutions has been relatively low for a long time. With the exception of some relatively short periods of supermajority confidence in the president following the election of the head of state, no political institution is perceived as trustworthy by the majority. On the contrary, especially in the case of the lower house of parliament and the government, trust is often below 20%, which is worrying given the parliamentary form of government. Similarly low levels of trust can be observed in public institutions and in political parties. Trust in the European Union has also long been one of the lowest in the Czech Republic among EU member states. At the same time, however, we have not yet observed dramatic manifestations of democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic; political participation, as expressed through voting and other forms of civic involvement, has stabilised and even increased slightly over the past decade. It can be concluded that the relatively high level of distrust in political institutions has not yet led to civic passivity. At the same time, however, studies show an increase in polarisation and an increase in the affective form of polarisation. In order to be able to unpack the background of the framework of trust in politics described above, we conducted as part of the Horizon Europe Trust in European Democracies (TRUEDEM) project a relatively large qualitative survey in the period April-July 2024, consisting of two interrelated activities - three focus groups composed of respondents with different socio-economic, age and educational characteristics, as well as 30 in-depth interviews with representatives of political institutions, state administration, social partners and the non-governmental sector. In our paper, we select political actors from this sample - representatives of legislative and executive bodies, including state administration at sub-state, national and European levels, as well as representatives of political parties. This sample includes a total of 16 individual respondents who were interviewed in the form of a semi-open-ended questionnaire for a period of 35 to 90 minutes. The analytical focus is mainly on how respondents reflect on the causes of (mistrust in) political institutions, how they propose to actively strengthen trust in these institutions, but also on issues related to the impact of new forms of political communication and the transformation of the media sphere (social networks, etc.) on building relationships between society and political institutions.