Political Trust in Times of Economic Turmoil: Lessons from the Euro Crisis
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2016-01-22
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
How politically costly is a severe economic crisis? Despite recent advances in the study of political trust, we still know relatively little about how trust in political institutions responds to massive economic downturns. Extending the theory of economic voting to trust in political institutions, I argue that frustrated citizens withdraw trust from institutions involved in the policymaking process in response to disappointing economic performance. Using the synthetic control method, I find that Spanish citizens punished the government, parliament, and political parties for the crisis. This massive economic downturn nearly halved the share of individuals trusting those institutions. Additional placebo tests suggest that the effect was specific to representative political institutions as it did not spill over to trust in institutions not involved in the policymaking process. These results, which appear to generalize to other countries, suggest that economic downturns may threaten democracy because they undermine confidence in important political institutions.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
None
Event Title
Annual Conference of the Swiss Political Science Association (SVPW) 2016
Event Location
Basel
Event Date
21.-22.01.2016
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
249891
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
Political Trust in Times of Economic Turmoil_Liesch.pdf
Size
2.34 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
54ef10d74278ed93eb12ccbb808d2261