People are more likely to trust institutions if they are involved in diverse, participatory groups, because such participation gives them a feeling of agency, teaches them that compromise is necessary (it’s not a sign that leaders are corrupt), and encourages them to share and critically assess information.

The 2020 American National Election Study (the most recent available wave) asked several items about civic participation, including this one: “During the past 12 months, have you worked with other people to deal with some issue facing your community?” It also asked several items about confidence in institutions, such as whether respondents agreed that “Much of what people hear in schools and the media are lies designed to keep people from learning the real truth about those in power.”

When controlling for education, gender, race, and self-placement on a liberal-conservative scale, working with others is strongly related to not holding a hostile view of media and schools (see below). Conservatives are more likely to be hostile, but when ideology is included in this model along with civic participation, it is not significant. Apparently, people who work with others to address local issues are more likely to trust schools and media, irrespective of ideology.

If I replace working with others with volunteering, the same pattern is evident: those who volunteer are less hostile. And if I replace hostility to schools and the media with positive impressions of Donald Trump as the dependent variable, the same general pattern recurs, with a fascinating twist. Self-placement on a left-right spectrum is unrelated to liking Donald Trump (standardized Beta = 0), but working with other citizens is related to disliking him (standardized Beta = .292, sig. <001).

These are correlations, not proofs of causality. In truth, the causal arrow may point both ways. Trusting schools and media may encourage civic participation, as well as the reverse. I suppose that disliking Trump could encourage local volunteering. However, I see a strong theoretical basis (dating back to Alexis de Tocqueville) for the thesis that local engagement generates trust in democratic institutions.

The question then becomes: how can we engage more people in local civic work? I address that topic in “What our nation needs is a broad-based, pro-democracy civic movement” (The Fulcrum, Nov. 25). (See also: the tide will turn; time to build; strategizing for civil resistance in defense of democracy etc.)