Putting ‘political’ back in political trust: an IRT test of the unidimensionality and cross-national equivalence of political trust measures

Abstract

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.

How to combine and analyze all the data from diverse sources: a multilevel analysis of institutional trust in the world

“…Few trust researchers compare different regions, or countries from more than one region (Catterberg and Moreno, 2006;Chan et al, 2017;Hutchison and Johnson, 2017;Letki, 2017;Mattes and Moreno, 2017;Muñoz, 2017;van der Meer and Ouattara, 2019;Uslaner, 2017;Newton, 2011, 2017).…”

“…However, research focusses mostly on the institutions of the political system. Trust in institutions of the administrationpolice, courts, public administration --are often used as indicators of political trust (see Schneider, 2017, van der Meer andOuattara, 2019). Trust in institutions of the civil societythe church, trade unions, the media, for exampleand of the economic systembanks, enterprisesis rarely analyzed despite its substantial interest.…”

“…Third, most comparative studies focus on only one institution or on a mean of trust in political institutions (Schneider, 2017;Van der Meer and Ouattara, 2019). In doing so, they study trust as if it were an attribute of individuals who trust rather than of the objects that are trusted (van der Meer and Ouattara, 2019; Mattes and Moreno, 2017;Zmerli and Newton, 2017).…”

“…Many researchers have shown that political and institutional factors have a substantial impact on trust in institutions (Hooghe and Zmerli, 2011). Most studies limit themselves to an analysis of trust in new or established European democracies (Armingeon and Ceka, 2014;Marien, 2011;van der Meer and Dekker, 2011;van Erkel and van der Meer, 2016;van der Meer and Ouattara, 2019) and in the United States (Brewer et al, 2017;Cawvey et al, 2017;Dalton, 2017;Hetherington and Rudolf, 2017;Wilkes, 2014). Most studies of trust restrict themselves to political trust, a central concept in the political science literature.…”

National Inspired or Locally Earned? The Locus of Local Political Support in a Multilevel Context

“…The widely used measures of SWD and political trust are both challenged for their conceptual and cross-nationally empirical ambiguity (e.g., Canache et al, 2001;Linde and Ekman, 2003;Van der Meer and Ouattara, 2019). However, this paper focuses on within-person comparisons on these two dominant measures.…”