Estranged yet engaged: rejection of authority, cognitive engagement, and support for transgressive protest

Recent episodes of political disruption and intimidation across established European democracies have intensified concerns about citizens’ support for protest that deviates from conventional social and political norms. Political distrust is often invoked to explain endorsement of such transgressive protest, yet empirical findings remain inconsistent. I argue that this ambiguity stems from treating distrust primarily as a scalar attitude, which obscures differential orientations toward political authority. Drawing on original cross-national survey data from eight European democracies, I distinguish authority rejection from cognitive engagement with trust-relevant political information. Distrust intensity is not independently associated with transgressive-protest support once authority rejection and cognitive engagement are taken into account. Instead, endorsement is concentrated among citizens who combine authority rejection with cognitive engagement – a group that resembles engaged authority-accepters in political interest and expressed abstract support for democracy. The findings suggest that support for transgressive protest is structured less by distrust intensity alone than by a specific configuration of authority rejection and cognitive engagement that scalar distrust does not capture.