Economic inequality, perceived responsiveness and political trust

Abstract

From a representation theory point of view, trust in political institutions is strongly related to the responsiveness of these institutions to citizens' preferences. However, is this also true when the political power of citizens is not equal, which is often the case in more unequal societies? In this article, it is argued that the link between perceptions of responsiveness to individual preferences and political trust differs across equal and unequal societies. We find that in inclusive societies, perceived political responsiveness is strongly related to political trust, whereas this link becomes weaker in more unequal societies. In other words, when economic inequality and exclusion are high, traditional accountability mechanisms between political actors and their citizens are less apparent. We speculate that this weaker link is due to habituation or a lack of political engagement, causing citizens to withdraw from political life altogether. The focus of this article lies on European and OECD-member countries. The study uses data from the International Social Survey Programme and the European Social Survey.

On their own turf? The level-specificity of political trust in multilevel political systems

“…For example, political factors important for trust in local government might be of no relevance for people's trust in the EU. In this paper, we consider a number of political factors that in previous research were identified as different manifestations of the trust-as-evaluation logic: perceived political/ideological distance to the government (Holmberg 1999;Keele 2005;Hetherington and Rudolph 2018), evaluations of political responsiveness (Goubin 2020;Torcal 2014) and of governmental/ institutional performance (Pharr and Putnam 2000;Mishler and Rose 1997;Miller and Listhaug 1999;Seyd 2015). In combination these factors cover the three different categories of legitimacy (Schmidt 2013;Scharpf 1999): input-legitimacy, throughput-legitimacy and output-legitimacy.…”

Economic performance, income inequality and political trust: new evidence from a cross-national study of 14 Asian countries

“…In this category, studies have sought to explain how variations in income inequality across countries correlate with political trust (Anderson & Singer, 2008;Goubin, 2020;Kumlin, 2011;Kumlin & Haugsgjerd, 2017;Uslaner, 2011Uslaner, , 2017Van der Meer & Hakhverdian, 2017;Zmerli & Castillo, 2015). Macro-level inequality is often measured by objective, national-level inequality indicators, such as the GINI coefficient (e.g., Solt, 2009Solt, , 2016.…”

“…The previous sections have reviewed literature on the relationship between economic performance/income inequality and political trust in both the micro-and macro-level. Until recently, most of the empirical research on the links between economic performance, income inequality and political trust has focused on advanced democracies in the Western World (Anderson & Singer, 2008;Chanley et al, 2000;Clarke et al, 1993;Goubin, 2020;Kumlin, 2011;Kumlin & Haugsgjerd, 2017;Loveless, 2013Loveless, , 2016Uslaner, 2011Uslaner, , 2017Van der Meer & Hakhverdian, 2017;Zmerli & Castillo, 2015). Existing scholarship has not considered Asia, home to a majority of the World's population.…”

The ‘sanction-policy’ linkage from the perspective of citizens and the role of the party system

“…On the basis of their answer, respondents are asked one of the two questions shown above. I follow the same approach adopted in recent studies using these data (Goubin 2018;Linde and Peters 2018), not only for the acknowledged reliability of the constructed variable but also for its closeness to the one suggested by Powell (2004, p. 102) who recommends the use of citizens' assessments of democracy 'as a measuring rod'. Figure 1 shows the mean values of the new dependent variable for each country included in the analysis.…”