This crisis hits differently? Trust towards the EU during the pandemic

There's a long tradition in political science to study citizens' trust towards the political system, such that political trust tends to be considered one of the main measures of a political system's health. Moreover, related to the study of the drivers behind European integration, this line of research demonstrated how the onset of the Great Recession undermined support towards its institutions (Ehrmann et al., 2013). The pandemic's exogeneity invites us to rethink the process of trust. Main aim of the proposed paper is to examine how has the outbreak of COVID-19 affected (or not) levels of trust towards the European Union. We first approach this overarching objective of the paper by way of conceptual clarifications and operationalisation around the concept of political trust. Then, we consider the three main logics put forward to explain variation in trust towards the EU at the individual level (Harteveld et al., 2013). The first logic has to do with rational evaluations and the clarity of responsibility (strategic/rationalist approach). In turn, the second refers to identitarian concerns and feelings of relative attachment towards the national and European arenas (affective/psychological approach). Finally, the third logic centers on trust levels at the national arena and knowledge on EU matters, theorizing on the heuristic value of the former upon the latter (extrapolation approach). Building on current discussion of this literature (Brosius et al., 2019), we derive specific hypotheses regarding their interaction with the pandemic crisis and draw on recent cross-national Eurobarometer data to examine them empirically. We argue that exploiting the exogeneity of COVID-19 can shed new light on this old question and contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the trust generating process more broadly.