Does Political Trust Matter? A Meta-analysis on the Consequences of Trust

Abstract

Political trust has long been seen as fundamental for societal cooperation and democratic legitimacy. However, evidence about its consequences are partial and fragmented, and we do not currently have a systematic understanding of whether political trust warrants such vast attention. This paper conducts a systematic review and meta-analysis of 61 studies reporting 329 coefficients derived from over three and a half million observations globally. After synthesising the conceptual and theoretical frameworks in the extant literature, the meta-analysis results show that trust is weakly to moderately related to outcomes as diverse as voter turnout, vote choice, policy preferences and compliance, but is unrelated to informal participation. These results are robust to a range of considerations such as the measurement of trust, modelling strategy, region of study, publication bias, and design of the study. The review also highlights substantial geographical and methodological gaps, particularly the reliance on cross-sectional designs. Substantively, the results show that trust is importantly and robustly related to what people want from their political systems and how they interact with it. By systematically analysing the extant research, the paper provides a robust, systematic, and empirical foundation to advance research on political trust.