Does Cultural Liberalism in Politics Shape the Education Gap in Political Trust?

It is well-documented that politicians and political parties are generally more culturally liberal than members of the public, with research indicating that this ‘ideological incongruence’ motivates political distrust among the latter. In our international comparative study, we theorize that this is crucial for the well-established education gap in political trust; because the less (more) educated tend to oppose (support) cultural liberalism, we hypothesize that the extent to which cultural liberalism is salient in the political domain affects the education gradient in political trust. Multilevel regression analyses of three waves (2006; 2010; 2014) of the European Social Survey (68,638 respondents in 62 country-year combinations) support our central argument. The salience of cultural liberalism in the political domain (as measured for: party politics; the governing cabinet; and the prime minister’s party, using two indicators derived from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey) positively impacts the extent to which the more educated show more political trust than the less educated. As expected, this is because the less educated are less culturally liberal. We conclude our study with a discussion of our findings and potential topics for future research.