The Good Politician and Political Trust: An Authenticity Gap in British Politics?
| Author | Will Jennings,Gerry Stoker,Viktor Orri Valgarðsson,Nick Clarke |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720928257 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720928257
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(4) 858 –880
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720928257
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The Good Politician and
Political Trust: An Authenticity
Gap in British Politics?
Viktor Orri Valgarðsson1, Nick Clarke2,
Will Jennings2 and Gerry Stoker2,3
Abstract
There are three broad sets of qualities that citizens might expect politicians to display: competence,
integrity and authenticity. To be authentic, a politician must be judged to be in touch with the lives
and outlooks of ordinary people and previous research has suggested that this expectation has
grown more prevalent in recent times. In this article, we use survey evidence from Britain – from
citizens, parliamentarians and journalists – to explore which groups are prone to judge politicians
by which criteria. While all groups give the highest absolute importance to integrity traits, we
establish that distrusting citizens are significantly more likely to prioritise authenticity. For political
elites and journalists, we find indications that authenticity is less valued than among citizens:
politicians place more relative importance on integrity traits while journalists value competence
most. We reflect on these findings and how they help us understand the growing crisis afflicting
British politics.
Keywords
authenticity, political trust, anti-politics, political leadership
Accepted: 28 April 2020
Introduction
The personality and qualities of political leaders has long been acknowledged as an
important element of politics and influence on political attitudes and behaviour (Declercq
et al., 1975; Laswell, 1930; Regenstrei, 1965). In more recent decades, academic atten-
tion has turned towards how the expectations that citizens have of politicians determine
these important dynamics (Garzia, 2011; Pancer et al., 1999). This increasing attention
1Durham University, Durham, UK
2University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
3University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Corresponding author:
Viktor Orri Valgarðsson, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, Al-Qasimi
Building, Elvet Hill Road, Durham DH1 3TU, UK.
Email: viktor.o.valgardsson@durham.ac.uk
928257PSX0010.1177/0032321720928257Political StudiesValgarðsson et al.
research-article2020
Article
Valgarðsson et al. 859
has been accompanied by the argument that these expectations and evaluations have
become even more important over time, as partisanship in the electorate has declined
dramatically (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2000; Mair and Van Biezen, 2001). Citizens are
less tied by loyalty to a party or candidate and thus might be more engaged in a process
of judgement about who to lend their support to at each election (Dalton, 1984, 2009).
The dynamics of interaction between politicians and citizens have also changed as media
technology develops rapidly and party organisations shift, fundamentally reshaping our
political landscapes (Garzia, 2011; McAllister, 2007; Manin, 1997). These new spaces for
interaction can support a greater focus by citizens on the personal qualities of the leader.
In this study, we explore the structure of citizens’ expectations towards politicians’ per-
sonality traits and the relationship between these expectations and political trust, using a
2018 representative sample of British adults. We compare these with the results of a small-N
survey conducted among political elites in the UK in 2017 to examine whether expectations
are consistent between citizens and elites. We open the article with a focus on three traits:
competence, integrity and authenticity. The first two categories are widely understood and
used. The same cannot be said for the third. We clarify the scope of authenticity and note the
evidence that it may be becoming an increasingly important criterion by which citizens judge
politicians. In the second section, we explore the potential connections between political trust
and authenticity. After outlining our research strategy, we present our findings. The conclud-
ing discussion explores the implications of our findings given the extensive lack of political
trust and confidence that has characterised the attitudes of British citizens for at least the past
decade (Clarke et al., 2018; Stoker, 2017; Whiteley et al., 2016).
The Qualities of Political Leaders: Competence, Integrity
and Authenticity
There has been some variability in the findings and terminology of previous studies on
the personal traits of politicians: while most of these find two distinct dimensions relating
to competence on one hand and integrity on the other, there is less consistency on other
potential dimensions (Brown et al., 1998; Garzia, 2011; Miller et al., 1986). A third
dimension has been called ‘charisma’, described as the ability of leaders to persuade vot-
ers, but also sometimes including traits such as warmth and humility (Miller et al., 1986;
Seijts et al., 2015). Relatedly, there is emerging evidence that it has become more impor-
tant to citizens in recent decades that politicians appear more ‘human’ to them (Clarke
et al., 2018; Garzia, 2011). As Clarke et al. (2018: 208) describe it:
The expectation that politicians be ‘human’ appears to have developed from a relatively minor
and undemanding expectation that politicians be genial, warm, and sympathetic to a relatively
major and more demanding expectation that politicians be ‘normal’ in a variety of ways and
situations and especially ‘in touch’ with the ‘real’ lives of ‘ordinary’ people.
These authors found that citizens’ anti-political sentiment has been rising steadily in
the UK and that this has gone together with changing expectations of politicians: while
citizens have always associated ‘The Good Politician’ with personality traits related to
integrity and competence, there is a growing expectation that politicians should also be
more ‘human’, ‘normal’ or ‘in touch’ with ordinary people: to be more authentic. Charisma
is a term better reserved for when exceptional qualities of vision, veracity and trustwor-
thiness are perceived in a leader by followers (Conger and Kanungo, 1987; Willner,
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