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A key lesson of the coronavirus pandemic was the importance for pro-social behaviour of popular trust in key information sources. Yet existing studies rarely consider the role of people’s trust in a range of different information sources, and the relationship between such trust and particular attitudes and behaviours among individuals. This study goes beyond the general mantra that ‘trust matters’ and explores more specific effects, relating to trust in particular actors and for particular outcomes. Based on a survey fielded on a representative sample of the British population conducted towards the end of the pandemic, we find evidence that people’s coronavirus attitudes and behaviours are particularly related to their trust in scientific experts and, in some cases, to their trust in local councils. However, trust in these actors is not uniformly associated with people’s coronavirus beliefs and actions. This suggests that the link between people's trust and their pro-social attitudes and behaviours is often specific rather than general. The results hold important implications for the design of effective public communication strategies in the event of any future health emergency.

The coronavirus pandemic increased the role played by scientific advisers in counselling governments and citizens on issues around public health. This raises questions about how citizens evaluate scientists, and in particular the grounds on which they trust them. Previous studies have identified various factors associated with trust in scientists, although few have systematically explored a range of judgements and their relative effects. This study takes advantage of scientific advisers’ heightened public profile during the pandemic to explore how people’s trust in scientists is shaped by perceptions about their features and traits, along with evaluations of their behaviour and role within the decision-making process. The study also considers people’s trust in politicians, thereby identifying whether trust in scientists reflects similar or distinctive considerations to trust in partisan actors. Data are derived from specially-designed conjoint experiments and surveys of nationally representative samples in Britain and the US.

We seem to be living in an age of citizen distrust of social and political elites. Distrust is also seen to have numerous negative consequences for our civic and democratic life. Yet are western democracies really facing a crisis of trust? This book provides an extensive and up-to-date review of one of the most important topics in contemporary political life. It explores the nature and condition of trust today by exploring three key issues. What do we mean by trust? How far are levels of trust in decline? How damaging are the consequences of low trust for effective democratic governance? Seyd also considers how trust arises, and which factors might explain the declines in trust witnessed recently in many countries. Providing evidence from many countries, Trust: How Citizens View Political Institutions pays particular attention to Britain, which has seen a marked decline in public regard for political elites, making the country a vital case for identifying the causes and effects of low trust. Combining conceptual and empirical analysis, the book provides a timely analysis of a central issue in contemporary political debate.

Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may ‘crowd out’ the role of trust. We hypothesise that, at the pandemic’s outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The procedural qualities of decisions made by public agencies are known to shape citizens’ perceptions of decision legitimacy. Existing empirical studies focus on procedures such as whether citizens are consulted, and whether their preferences are taken into account. Less is known about whether decisions made by public agencies are deemed legitimate if they reflect citizens’ broad interests rather than their immediate preferences. Yet many contemporary issues confront policy makers with dilemmas of whether to respond to citizens’ demands or instead to act on their interests. Using an experimental approach among a sample of British citizens, we analyse the effects on perceived legitimacy of various aspects of decision responsiveness. We focus in particular on whether public agencies are rewarded if they ignore citizens’ preferences while showing they are acting in their broader interests. Our results show that perceived legitimacy is indeed higher when decisions are seen to reflect citizens’ collective interests. But this boost disappears if individuals disapprove of the agency’s decision. We conclude that acting in citizens’ broad interests is unlikely to stimulate legitimacy among individuals who do not favour a decision’s outcome.

Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may ‘crowd out’ the role of trust. We hypothesise that, at the pandemic’s outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Democratic legitimacy is sometimes measured by comparing what individuals expect of democracy with their evaluations of democratic performance. However, such composite measures hinder our understanding of whether any factors found to shape legitimacy do so through effects on expectations, through effects on evaluations or through effects on both. This article considers people’s democratic expectations and evaluations separately. By modelling each – along with their combination in a measure of legitimacy – it identifies the factors that shape each outcome, and in particular whether any effects on legitimacy run through what people expect of democracy or through how they evaluate democratic performance. Models are run for four different dimensions of democracy to test whether the factors shaping people’s attitudes vary between different aspects of the democratic system. The analysis is conducted using Wave 6 of the European Social Survey (2012-13) on populations across 16 west European countries. Analysis of individual country populations also enables us to identify whether the causes and mechanisms of democratic legitimacy vary between different national contexts.

In Britain, levels of political trust have declined, stimulating policy makers to explore ways of appealing to discontented citizens. One such initiative involves reform of the political system. Yet this raises the question of which types of political reform are likely to appeal to discontented citizens. Existing studies have examined how individuals respond to political reforms, yet these studies only consider a limited range of institutional changes. Scholars and policy makers thus know little about the popular appeal of a wider set of institutional reforms. Taking advantage of proposals for political reform in Britain, this article considers public reactions to a wide range of institutional changes. Using data from the 2011 British Social Attitudes survey, we find that direct democratic reforms are not the only changes that appeal to discontented citizens. Instead, policy-makers may also appeal to the distrustful via reforms that allow voters more control over their political representatives.

Disappointment is often identified as a pathology of modern politics; citizens expect much of politicians, yet governments are ill-equipped to deliver outcomes commensurate with those expectations. The net result is said to be a widespread disappointment; a negative balance between what citizens expect of government and what they perceive governments to deliver. Yet little attention has hitherto been paid to which kinds of citizens are particularly disappointed with politics, and why. This article offers one of the first empirical analyses of political disappointment. Drawing on a survey conducted in Britain, it provides a quantitative measure of political disappointment and explores its prevalence among citizens. It then considers which social groups might be more prone to disappointment than others. In particular, it explores whether certain groups are more disappointed by virtue of holding very high expectations of government or very low perceptions of government performance. The article concludes by considering what strategies might be open to policy makers to alleviate political disappointment.

This article examines how citizens judge the trustworthiness of public officials, focusing on one aspect of the cognitive process by trust is assessed. It considers how far trust reflects not only the perceptions of how politicians behave but also prior expectations of that behaviour. ‘Expectancy-disconfirmation’ models suggest that attitudes to public services are largely shaped by performance perceptions adjusted for expectations. Drawing on survey data from a sample of citizens in the UK, the paper finds results that are inconsistent with this model. Instead, trust is found to primarily reflect performance perceptions alone; expectations play little additional role in shaping citizen evaluations. The results suggest that policy makers are unlikely to boost levels of political trust by reducing what citizens expect of politicians. Instead, policy makers concerned to improve their public image will have to undertake the harder task of improving their performance.