Democratic debate or destructive dissent? Comparing gaps in trust in courts, police and government

Using multi-level models to analyze differences in attitudes and values between government and opposition supporters in 55 countries, we find that the gap in trust between government and opposition supporters continues to grow with development up to the upper middle income category. Since large gaps in trust related to the courts, the civil service and the police are very rare in prosperous democracies, they could well signal problems with the polity. We also study fissured confidence in the military but show that it has no relation to the health of the economy or the political system. The individual level data is obtained from the World Values Survey Wave 5 and 6.