How people trust their governments : Trends, patterns and determinants of trust differentiation in multilevel polities

Abstract

AcknowledgementsChapter 1 Introduction 1.1. Political trust, democracy and multilevel governance: introducing the research problem 1.2. Structure of this chapter 1.3. The concept of political trust 1.4. Trust and distrust in democratic governance 1.5. Research gaps: trust in government as generalized vs. specific evaluation 1.6. Shifting the focus to how people trust: political trust in multilevel governance 1.7. Research questions 1.7.1. Trends and patterns of trust differentiation: the need for exploratory descriptive analysis 1.7.2. Determinants of trust differentiation: the need for explanatory analysis 1.8. Research design, data sources and chapters' overview 1.8.1. Overview of chapters Part I Trends and patterns Chapter 2 Trust lost, trust regained? Citizens' trust in EU, national and subnational governments during and after economic crisis 2008-2019 2.1. Introduction 2.1.3. Sub-questions: Trust trends, short-term fluctuations and relationship with macroeconomic conditions 2.3. Trust in decline? 2.3.1. Changes in political trust 2008-2019 -comparative analysis 2.4. Volatility of trust 2.4.1. Volatility of political trust in EU countries -comparative analysis 2.5. Correlates of political trust in times of economic crisis 2.5.1. Trust trends and macro-economic conditions: comparative evidence 2.6. Discussion and conclusions Chapter 3 Patterns of trust differentiation amongst more and less politically sophisticated citizens 3.1. Introduction 3.2. Cognitive mechanisms and patterns of trust differentiation 3.3. Political sophistication and trust differentiation 3.4. Data and measurements 3.4.1. Data 3.4.2. Measurements 3.5. Data analysis 3.5.1. Data analysis strategy 3.5.2. Political trust differentiation in the Netherlands 3.6. Conclusions 3.7. Limitations and future research Part II Determinants Chapter 4 On their own turf? The level-specificity of political trust in multilevel political systems 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Theory 4.2.1. Trust as evaluation 4.2.2. Trust generalization/differentiation 4.3. Specific trust and trust criteria 4.3.1. Representation of one's preferred party in government -hometeam effect 4.3.2. Evaluations of political responsiveness and performance 4.3.3. Hypotheses 4.4. Data and measurements 4.4.1. Data 4.4.2. Measurements 4.5. Data analysis 4.6. Conclusions Chapter 5 The home-team factor and political trust in multilevel systems: evidence from Poland and the Netherlands 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Trust-as-evaluation: the role of the home-team factor 5.3. Heterogeneous home-team effect in multilevel governance 5.4. Home-team effects in localized vs. nationalized local systems

Robust Governance in Turbulent Times

“…The learning literature argues that learning processes at one level cannot simply be equated to the processes on others, and that learning may be biased and patchy (Van Assche et al 2022). The trust literature considers compensatory dynamics to be as likely as congruence dynamics (Proszowska 2021). Finally, the institutionalist literature argues that polities facing turbulence do not always mobilize multiple repertoires of responsesdecoupling talk and action insteadthereby deterring the failure of one component (talk) from reverberating across entire systems (e.g., Brunsson 1989).…”