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Much research intro political trust-its causes, correlates and trends-builds on the twin assumptions that trust in a wide range of political institutions is ultimately an expression of (1) a singular and (2) a cross-nationally equivalent underlying attitude. Yet, the widespread assumptions of unidimensionality and cross-national equivalence of political trust is at odds with the dominant conceptual understanding of political trust as a relational concept, driven by subjects, objects, and their interplay. This paper employs Rasch modelling as a direct, strict test of unidimensionality, equivalence and item hierarchy. We test the fit of the Rasch model on political trust items in seven widely used, cross-national surveys (World Values Survey, Afrobarometer, Arabbarometer, Asian Barometer, Eurobarometer, European Social Survey, and Latinobarometro), covering 161 national surveys in 119 countries across the globe. We find that the unidimensional specification of the Rasch model does not fit the standard political trust question batteries. Political trust is not cross-nationally equivalent; trust in specific political institutions is more than a mere indicator of an underlying attitude. This conclusion does not impede cross-national research into political trust; rather it illustrates the need for consistent robustness checks across a range of objects of political trust. Our findings open up new venues for substantive research questions on specific objects of political trust and their relationships.

For decades, scholars have argued that low and declining political trust affect citizens’ support for democratic and undemocratic reform. While some theorized that low political trust induces alienation and support for non‐democratic decision making, others argued that it pushes critical citizens to support reforms aimed to reinvigorate democracy. Yet, empirical tests of these expectations remained sparse and inconclusive. This paper employs panel data from the Netherlands (covering 3 waves in 3 years) to test these diverging theories simultaneously. We employ the random effects within‐between (REWB) model to differentiate between the effects of structurally low and declining political trust. Our results suggest that low and declining trust both diminish support for representative democracy, enhance support for direct democratic decision making and do not affect support for authoritarianism. These findings cast doubt on the understanding of political distrust as a determinant of political alienation. Rather, they support theories of critical citizenship and stealth democracy.

The dominant model that guides scholarly research on political trust rests on the assumption that this attitude is evaluative. It states that citizens evaluate political actors’ trustworthiness traits against a set of normative benchmarks. Remarkably, despite its dominance in political trust research and its serious implications for theories on democratic accountability, this assumption has not been tested systematically. This paper tests the micro-level foundations of the trust-as-evaluation model via an extensive two-wave survey experiment among 15,997 respondents. We assess to what extent normative benchmarks of trustworthiness condition citizens’ trust in politicians with 11 randomized traits. Our findings challenge the commonly held view of the role of normative benchmarks in the trust-as-evaluation model. While respondents clearly differentiate trustworthy politicians from untrustworthy ones and withdraw trust from politicians with negative traits, their normative benchmarks do not systematically influence this judgment. We discuss the implications of these findings for the trust-as-evaluation model.

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