Political Trust as the Evaluation of Process and Performance: A Cross-National Study of 42 European

Countries

Tom van der Meer and Armen Hakhverdian

Problem: Political trust is known to be strongly related to perceptions of performance,

accountability, impartiality, corruption, and so on. However, the extent to which political trust is
based on actual policy performance and actual procedures remains hotly debated.

Goal of the article: This article extends and tests the trust-as-evaluation approach that is dominant in
political science. Citizens supposedly grant and withhold trust in politics based on an assessment of
its merits.

Conclusion: We find that macro-economic outcomes do not relate to political trust once we control
for corruption. The effects of corruption and macro-economic outcomes are indeed stronger among
the higher educated. However, the effect of macro-economic outcomes is not conditional on citizens’
values.

Process trumps performance. But although economic performance seems inconsequential, this does
not refute trust-as-evaluation.

We do not find support that in a cross-national setting the evaluative nature of trust is value-based.

We find support for the interactive relationship between contexts and educational attainment. The
harmful effect of high levels of corruption on political trust is most prevalent among the higher
educated.

Hypotheses:

H1: The relevance of performances and processes should be conditional on the values that
citizens hold dear and the accuracy with which they perceive them.

H2: Although all citizens are likely to be repelled by corruption in most democracies,
dysfunctional institutions are unlikely to affect all citizens equally if only due to heterogeneity
in terms of cognitive and moral functions.

Research: Through multilevel analyses of the European Value Survey 2008, we model the effects of a
wide range of macro-economic outcomes and procedural characteristics on two aspects of political
trust: satisfaction with democracy and confidence in political institutions.

A well-functioning representative democracy requires trust in the regime, but scepticism in the
institutions and actors that govern it from day to day.

The missing link in the trust-as-evaluation approach is the role of expectations. Implicitly, the
literature has assumed these to be constant among citizens.

Rationalist approach based on evaluation of process, this has to do with accuracy. Norms are
important as well. Accuracy-mechanism and norms-mechanism.