Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CRITICALTRUST (Healthy or harmful distrust? On the democratic relevance of political scepticism over blind (dis)trust)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-09-01 bis 2026-02-28
Democracy requires both citizens’ trust in politics and their skepticism. Scholars warned against the likely detrimental effects of blind trust and blind distrust. The former would make citizens susceptible to manipulation, the latter to alienation. By contrast, (dis)trust that is not blind but evaluative stimulates vigilant civic engagement. While blind (dis)trust would lead to an anomic democracy, evaluative (dis)trust would stimulate democratic reinvigoration and accountability.
Yet, while scholars have widely acknowledged this paradox, political trust research struggled to integrate skepticism conceptually, theoretically, in measurement, and in empirical analyses. Instead, most political trust research focuses exclusively on levels of political (dis)trust. This one-dimensional approach made it very difficult to answer central questions to the field, to operationalize political trust in full, to interpret descriptive trends in political trust and to offer a sound diagnosis of the causes, consequences, and risk of low or declining trust.
CRITICALTRUST addresses this vast lacuna. It first develops a novel, two-dimensional model of political (dis)trust. Second, this model will be the foundation for empirical analyses at the micro-level (citizens; via survey and experimental data), meso-level (social groups and local environments via registry data), and macro-level (via aggregated data and country-level measures). Third, the project will develop new measures that distinguish dispositional from relational (dis)trust at the individual level for primary data collection, and develop techniques to distinguish between them in secondary analyses and the individual and macro-level. Primary data collection takes place across three-waves in a cross-national panel survey in 8 European countries: Estonia, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Both the survey’s panel element and the survey experiments embedded in them allow a systematic test causal effects that have long been argued for in the literature.
The outcomes of these analyses will offer diagnoses, not only of the risks of low and declining trust but also of the risks of blind trust and distrust. This will support advice to democratic actors whether and how to stimulate political trust.
Yet, while scholars have widely acknowledged this paradox, political trust research struggled to integrate skepticism conceptually, theoretically, in measurement, and in empirical analyses. Instead, most political trust research focuses exclusively on levels of political (dis)trust. This one-dimensional approach made it very difficult to answer central questions to the field, to operationalize political trust in full, to interpret descriptive trends in political trust and to offer a sound diagnosis of the causes, consequences, and risk of low or declining trust.
CRITICALTRUST addresses this vast lacuna. It first develops a novel, two-dimensional model of political (dis)trust. Second, this model will be the foundation for empirical analyses at the micro-level (citizens; via survey and experimental data), meso-level (social groups and local environments via registry data), and macro-level (via aggregated data and country-level measures). Third, the project will develop new measures that distinguish dispositional from relational (dis)trust at the individual level for primary data collection, and develop techniques to distinguish between them in secondary analyses and the individual and macro-level. Primary data collection takes place across three-waves in a cross-national panel survey in 8 European countries: Estonia, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Both the survey’s panel element and the survey experiments embedded in them allow a systematic test causal effects that have long been argued for in the literature.
The outcomes of these analyses will offer diagnoses, not only of the risks of low and declining trust but also of the risks of blind trust and distrust. This will support advice to democratic actors whether and how to stimulate political trust.
CRITICALTRUST performed a range of activities:
- The formulation a conceptual framework that summarizes, structures, and integrates the literature on political trust and skepticism. This has led to a heuristic map of political trust research that may serve as a guide to trust scholars.
- The operationalization the two dimensions of political trust, particularly the second dimension that ranges from dispositional to relational beliefs, as well operationalizing various types of belief (such as cynicism) along those dimensions. This activity has been completed successfully, after a cross-disciplinary review of measures, qualitative pretests among experts and regular citizens across multiple countries, and a large-N quantitative pretest to assess homogeneity, validity, and reliability. The outcomes have been successful.
- The design of research methods to further political trust research. The project successfully tested the process of socialization more directly, based on a rare method developed in sociology. It is developing approaches to test the evaluative model observationally (via registry data) and to integrate the socialization and evaluative models experimentally (a two-wave vignette study). It developed a macro-level method to assess the limits of the evaluative approach via residuals in multilevel explanatory models. It developed a test of a pessimistic bias in public opinion research via a hybrid observational-experimental design. And it is developing a method to model and explain the process of trust formation, building on approaches in consumer choice research.
- The fielding of a large-N panel study (3 waves) across 8 countries, encompassing a broad range of political trust measures along both dimensions, as well as supposed determinants and outcomes of political trust, and a range of vignette experimental studies.By November 2025 the first two of a total of three waves have been fielded successfully
- The fielding of several smaller quantitative data collection studies.
- The organization of multiple workshops and sections at international conferences in 2025 and 2026, for junior and senior political trust scholars.
- The stimulation of the rise of an international network of political trust scholars.
- The formulation a conceptual framework that summarizes, structures, and integrates the literature on political trust and skepticism. This has led to a heuristic map of political trust research that may serve as a guide to trust scholars.
- The operationalization the two dimensions of political trust, particularly the second dimension that ranges from dispositional to relational beliefs, as well operationalizing various types of belief (such as cynicism) along those dimensions. This activity has been completed successfully, after a cross-disciplinary review of measures, qualitative pretests among experts and regular citizens across multiple countries, and a large-N quantitative pretest to assess homogeneity, validity, and reliability. The outcomes have been successful.
- The design of research methods to further political trust research. The project successfully tested the process of socialization more directly, based on a rare method developed in sociology. It is developing approaches to test the evaluative model observationally (via registry data) and to integrate the socialization and evaluative models experimentally (a two-wave vignette study). It developed a macro-level method to assess the limits of the evaluative approach via residuals in multilevel explanatory models. It developed a test of a pessimistic bias in public opinion research via a hybrid observational-experimental design. And it is developing a method to model and explain the process of trust formation, building on approaches in consumer choice research.
- The fielding of a large-N panel study (3 waves) across 8 countries, encompassing a broad range of political trust measures along both dimensions, as well as supposed determinants and outcomes of political trust, and a range of vignette experimental studies.By November 2025 the first two of a total of three waves have been fielded successfully
- The fielding of several smaller quantitative data collection studies.
- The organization of multiple workshops and sections at international conferences in 2025 and 2026, for junior and senior political trust scholars.
- The stimulation of the rise of an international network of political trust scholars.
At this stage, the project has led to two important breakthroughs beyond the state-of-the-art: (1) the formation of the two-dimensional conceptual framework with a heuristic map, and (2) the operationalization and measurement of the second dimension.
The first restructures the state-of-the-art in (political) trust research. It forms an integrative framework for distinct conceptualizations and explanatory models of political trust. The common conceptual framework gives structure and direction to decades old proposals to distinguish between blind (dispositional) belief and vigilant (responsive) scepticism, and reconsiders recent innovations by showing their strengths, their lacunae, and their interrelationships. The heuristic map illuminates how rivalling theories and descriptions have focused on different types of trust beliefs, and thereby relates them to each other.
The second breakthrough at this stage is the operationalization and measurement of the second dimension of political trust that distinguishes between dispositional and responsive beliefs. It was essential to break out of the mould of existing trust measures - most notably the standard survey batteries that only cover the range from high to low trust. To date, no attempts had been successful in having both a firm conceptual basis, and a valid, reliable, and homogenous measurement. The qualitiative and quantitative pretests and the main survey show that it is not only possible to measure the second dimension of political trust in line with conceptual and methodological demands, but also that it can be done with a moderate number of items, so that it can be included in specialized surveys.
The first restructures the state-of-the-art in (political) trust research. It forms an integrative framework for distinct conceptualizations and explanatory models of political trust. The common conceptual framework gives structure and direction to decades old proposals to distinguish between blind (dispositional) belief and vigilant (responsive) scepticism, and reconsiders recent innovations by showing their strengths, their lacunae, and their interrelationships. The heuristic map illuminates how rivalling theories and descriptions have focused on different types of trust beliefs, and thereby relates them to each other.
The second breakthrough at this stage is the operationalization and measurement of the second dimension of political trust that distinguishes between dispositional and responsive beliefs. It was essential to break out of the mould of existing trust measures - most notably the standard survey batteries that only cover the range from high to low trust. To date, no attempts had been successful in having both a firm conceptual basis, and a valid, reliable, and homogenous measurement. The qualitiative and quantitative pretests and the main survey show that it is not only possible to measure the second dimension of political trust in line with conceptual and methodological demands, but also that it can be done with a moderate number of items, so that it can be included in specialized surveys.