Regional inequality and institutional trust in Europe

Abstract

Inequality is a central explanation of political distrust in democracies, but has so far rarely been considered a cause of (dis-)trust towards supranational governance. Moreover, while political scientists have extensively engaged with income inequality, other salient forms of inequality, such as the regional wealth distribution, have been sidelined. These issues point to a more general shortcoming in the literature. Determinants of trust in national and European institutions are often theorized independently, even though empirical studies have demonstrated large interdependence in citizens' evaluations of national and supranational governance levels. In this paper, we argue that inequality has two salient dimensions: (1) income inequality and (2) regional inequality. Both dimensions are important antecedent causes of European Union (EU) trust, the effects of which are mediated by evaluations of national institutions. On the micro-level, we suggest that inequality decreases a person's trust in national institutions and thereby diminishes the positive effect of national trust on EU trust. On the macro-level, inequality decreases country averages of trust in national institutions. This, however, informs an individual's trust in the EU positively, compensating for the seemingly untrustworthiness of national institutions. Finally, we propose that residing in an economically declining region can depress institutional trust. We find empirical support for our arguments by analysing regional temporal change over four waves of the European Social Survey 2010-2016 with a sample of 209 regions nested in 24 EU member states. We show that changes in a member state's regional inequality have similarly strong effects on trust as changes in the Gini coefficient of income inequality. Applying causal mediation techniques, we can show that the effects of inequality on EU trust are largely mediated through citizens' evaluations of national institutions. In contrast, residing in an economically declining region directly depresses EU trust, with economically lagging areas turning their back on European governance and resorting to the national level instead. Our findings highlight the relevance of regional inequality for refining our understanding of citizens' support for Europe's multi-level governance system and the advantages of causal modelling for the analysis of political preferences in a multi-level governance system.

Varieties of corona news: a cross-national study on the foundations of online misinformation production during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In fact, studies show that there are remarkable correlations among those variables. For example, while a study finds a strong relationship between high levels of economic inequality and low levels of trust in national institutions across the EU member countries [ 121 ], another one conducted in post-Soviet nations shows that there is a negative association between perception of corruption and trust in public institutions such as police, national and regional governments, and courts [ 122 ]. Given that the state capacity and trust in public institutions are integral to an effective pandemic strategy—affecting people’s compliance with restrictions and willingness to get vaccinated, governments’ success in enforcing lockdowns and other isolation practices, etc.—it is not surprising that those countries produced more similar news.…”

How does income inequality affect the support for populist parties?

“…It can be argued that observing unequal outcomes and going through economic deprivations can reduce trust in the actors responsible for the policies, which are established parties and parliaments. For example, research finds evidence inequality is related to trust in governing institutions (Lipps & Schraff, 2020). With this, we should observe that inequality reduces trust in political elites and that people who distrust the elite are more likely to support populist parties.…”

Perceived Income Inequality, Trust, and Consumers’ Ethical Judgments

“…There has also been limited research on the relationship between income inequality and political trust (Lee, Chang, and Hur 2020; Zmerli and Castillo 2015), with the consistent finding that these are negatively correlated. Lipps and Schraff (2021) found that income inequality is negatively related to institutional trust among citizens (e.g., trust in national governments and supranational institutions such as the European Union). Considering that income inequality leads to reduced social capital and reduced trust in institutions, income inequality should also lead to a lack of trust among consumers for institutions within marketing systems such as corporations.…”