Communal and Exchange-Based Trust in Germany Thirty Years After Reunification: Convergence or Still an East-West Divide?

It is uncontested that political trust is highly relevant in democratic political systems. Without commitments by a critical number of citizens, democratic governments cannot gain public acceptance for their policies. Whereas the investigation of political trust was for a long time more prevalent for the case of established democracies, in particular in the direct aftermath of transitions towards democracy, scholars have begun to study to a larger extent political trust in new democracies. Nevertheless, this latter interest has faded away in recent times. 30 years after the German reunification, we take stock of political trust in East and West Germany. Drawing on ESS data from 2002 to 2018 (ESS 1 – 9), we study empirically the convergence hypothesis in view of both the levels of political trust and the particular quality of citizens’ trust in its democratic institutions. To assess the quality of this attitudinal relationship between citizens and the state, we focus on the psychological underpinnings of political trust. For this purpose, our study draws on the distinction between communal and exchange-based trust in the theoretical framework of Braithwaite (1998). Special attention is paid to the importance of social bonds. Our findings show that we can still not speak of a convergence of the mere levels of trust in East and West Germany: East Germans do still display lower levels of trust in both representative and regulatory institutions. Regarding the quality of political trust, however, the gap between East and West is less pronounced. These findings are highly relevant for both research on the psychological underpinnings of trust and the assessment of the consequences of the undemocratic heritage for the German political system.