The literature on political trust is marked by the assumption that trust in Europe is in crisis. Levels of political trust are alleged to be declining, because of dramatic events, such as the Great Recession of 2008, or the refugee crisis of 2015/16. According to the trust-as-evaluation approach, citizens will punish their political actors in case they are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in their country. In this paper, we argue that citizens do not only care about the political reaction on a given crisis, but also about who is in charge at the time of unpopular policy changes.
In contrast to previous studies, which relied on cross-sectional survey evidence, we design original vignette experiments in which citizens are exposed to external crises (economic crisis and austerity / refugee crisis). Importantly, as citizens’ reactions to these events will likely depend on their own political orientation, and the ideology of the government who is in charge, we further manipulate the government composition. We expect that citizens will only punish governing parties for these crises, when their expectations about what these parties usually do are subverted (e.g., a radical right government allowing refugees).
Experimental evidence does not support the idea that political trust is structurally undermined by subverted expectations, nor is turnout or satisfaction with democracy. Rather, incumbent supporters use their vote to express their discontent, through punishing "their" parties for unexpected policies. Hence, political trust may be a more stable and resilient attitude than what the literature currently assumes.