Political trust as a coping-mechanism for economic risks

Abstract

Over the past decade, Western societies have experienced an expansion of economic risks at the same time as citizens’ political trust has come under pressure. A common assumption in previous research is that perceived economic risks reduce political trust. This paper presents a novel theoretical argument for the reversed causal pathway where political trust is seen as a coping-mechanism for expected economic risks. We test this argument using panel data and statistical models equipped to isolate this specific causal pathway running from trust to economic risks. Our findings demonstrate that political trust reduces perceptions of economic risks, in particular for people with high normative welfare state beliefs. As such, we contribute to the burgeoning literatures on the interplay between political attitudes and economic risks and on the consequences of political trust.