Political Virtue and Political Trust: Comparing the Confidence Building Capacity of Liberal Democracy and Religious Democracy

Democracy requires political trust to survive and improve its functions. This article seeks to compare the capacity of the system of religious democracy and liberal democracy in generation of political trust through comparative study. For this purpose, firstly the importance and necessity of political trust are considered for the democratic system, and then two important instruments of the liberal democracy system are introduced in the production of political trust, namely "institutionalization" and "political participation". The failure of contemporary liberal democracies in gaining the political trust of citizens, which described in the writings of the researchers as "the great decline of political trust", is a starting point for explaining political trust in the system of religious democracy. In the system of religious democracy, in addition to institutionalization and political participation for building political trust, another important tool called "political virtue" is used, which will be the source of political trust. In this article, political virtue is introduced in the form of a tree that can produce political trust based on the relationship between Imam and the Ummah. Three important principles are introduced in the theory of political virtue that can create an accumulation of political trust in Islamic society.