Political Trust

In recent years, declining levels of political trust have been cast in sharp relief by a surge in authoritarian-populist movements and leadership styles on one hand, and crises like the Covid-19 pandemic that have demanded trust and cooperation between governors and governed on the other. This has led to an upsurge of academic research on how we reached this point and how (and why) we might restore trust in political systems, actors and institutions in the future. As a concept in and of itself, political trust also spawns a number of competing theoretical propositions and methodological conundrums. The same is true of both mistrust – which denotes a healthy form of political scepticism – and distrust – which denotes active cynicism and expectations of harmful repercussions in trusting relationships. The following texts grapple with theories of trust, explore how it is measured, and examine the ways in which trust differs between individuals and affects political behaviour.

Introduction to the topic:

Van der Meer, T.W.G., and Zmerli, S. (2017). The deeply rooted concern with political trust. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust. Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing. pp.1-18. 

Category 1: Theories of trust and its importance.

Lewicki, R.J., Tomlinson, E.C. and Gillespie, N. (2006). Models of interpersonal trust development: Theoretical approaches, empirical evidence, and future directions. Journal of Management, Vol.32(6): 991-1022.

Hooghe, M. (2011). Why there is basically only one form of political trust. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, Vol.13(2): 269-275.

Warren, M. (2017) What kinds of trust does a democracy need? Trust from the perspective of democratic theory. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.33-52.

Citrin, J. and Stoker, L. (2018). Political trust in a cynical age. Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 21: 49-70.

Bertsou, E. (2019). Rethinking Political Trust. European Political Science Review, Vol. 11(2): 213-230.

Devine, D., Gaskell, J., Jennings, W., and Stoker, G. (2020). Exploring Trust, Mistrust, and Distrust. Discussion paper for the 1ST Digital Workshop of the ESRC ‘TrustGov’ project (20th April 2020). Available here.

Category 2: The measurement of trust.

Seyd, B. (2016). How should we measure political trust? UK Political Studies Association annual international conference, Brighton (UK), 21st-23rd March 2016. Available here.

Marien, S. (2017). The measurement equivalence of political trust. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.89-103.

Zmerli, S., and Newton, K. (2017). Objects of political and social trust: scales and hierarchies. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.104-124.

Hamm, J.A., Smidt, C., and Mayer, R.C. (2019). Understanding the psychological nature and mechanisms of political trust. PLoS ONE, Vol.14(5): e0215835.

Van der Meer, T.W.G., and Ouattara, E. (2019). Putting ‘political’ back in political trust: an IRT test of the unidimensionality and cross‑national equivalence of political trust measures. Quality and Quantity, Vol. 53: 2983–3002.

Category 3: Predictors of trust.

Maxwell, R. (2010). Trust in Government Among British Muslims: The Importance of Migration Status. Political Behaviour, Vol. 32(1): 89-109.

Grimes, M. (2017). Procedural fairness and political trust. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.256-269.

Mayne, Q., and Hakhverdian, A. (2017). Education, socialisation and political trust. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.176-198. 

Mondak, J.J., Hayes, M. and Canache, D. (2017). Biological and psychological influences on political trust. In S. Zmerli and T.W.G. van der Meer (Eds.), Handbook on Political Trust, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.143-159.

Graβl, P., Schaap, G., Spagnuolo, F., and Van ’t Riet, J. (2019). The effects of scandalization in political news messages on political trust and message evaluation. Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919879582.

Bøggild, T., Aarøe, L., and Petersen, M.B. (2020) Citizens as Complicits: Distrust in Politicians and Biased Social Dissemination of Political Information. The American Political Science Review: 1-17.

Category 4: Trust and governance.

Hooghe, M., and Marien, S. (2013). A Comparative Analysis of the Relation between Political Trust and Forms of Political Participation in Europe. European Societies, Vol.15(1): 131-152.

Christensen, H.S. (2018). Knowing and distrusting: how political trust and knowledge shape direct-democratic participation, European Societies, Vol. 20(4): 572-594.

Stoker, G., and Evans, M. (2019). Does political trust matter? In S. Elstub and O. Escobar (Eds.), Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance, Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. pp.120-134.

Thomson, R. and Brandenburg, H. (2019). Trust and Citizens’ Evaluations of Promise Keeping by Governing Parties. Political Studies, Vol. 67(1): 249–266.

Valgarðsson, V. O., Clarke, N., Jennings, W., and Stoker, G. (2020). The Good Politician and Political Trust: An Authenticity Gap in British Politics? Political Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720928257

Weinberg, J. (2022). Feelings of Trust, Distrust and Risky Decision-Making in Political Office. An Experimental Study with National Politicians in Three Democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 56(7). doi.org/10.1177/00104140221139376.

Weinberg, J. (2022). Trust, Governance, and the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Explainer Using Longitudinal Data from the United Kingdom. The Political Quarterly, Vol. 93(2): 316-325.