Testing a Psychological Model of Political Trust

Literature Review

Political trust plays a central role in research and theory in political science and political psychology (Braithwhite & Levi, 2003). One reason for this interest is that trust (both generalized trust, and political trust) is related to social capital, which, in turn, is associated with a number of desirable political, social, and economic outcomes, such as well-performing democratic institutions, happiness, economic growth, political tolerance and democratic stability (Rothstein & Stolle, 2008). More recently, low political trust—and political distrust—has been associated with the rise of populist political forces and policies in Western democracies (Algan, Papaioannou, Guriev & Passari, 2017; Geurkink, Zaslove, Sluiter & Jacobs, 2019; Van Asche, Dhont & Pettigrew, 2019). Political trust can be defined as “a summary judgment that the [political] system is responsive and will do what is right even in the absence of constant scrutiny” (Miller & Listhaug, 1990, p. 358). There are two aspects of political trust: trust into the system with its institutions and procedures, which can be defined as macro-level, or organizational trust, and trust into the specific people who are part of the system at the given point in time, which can be defined as micro-level, or individual political trust (Blind, 2007; Citrin, 1974).