How multilevel governance structures and crisis mitigating measures impact political trust: a systematic literature review

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that actors and institutions like governments and courts were willing to take or endorse drastic measures to mitigate the spread of the virus. So-called lockdowns and other social restrictions were imposed on citizens without much public participation. At the same time, the political systems responding to the pandemic have become increasingly interconnected into multilevel governance (MLG) structures. This interconnectedness of various levels is well expressed in times of crisis. Within the European Union, for example, different levels of government were involved in the mitigation of the pandemic. The absence of public participation in the mitigation of crises and the increasing complexity of political systems raise questions on citizens’ perceptions of and trust in their governments. Indeed, political trust is seen as an important precondition for the functioning of a political system, especially in times of crisis. It is for example linked with vaccination intention. The concept of political trust is also relevant from an MLG perspective, as different tiers of government directly or indirectly influence citizens’ and as citizens can express trust in several levels simultaneously. However, while both MLG systems and crisis governance are extensively studied, they are rarely examined in combination with political trust or in combination with each other. This paper therefore examines the following question: How do crises mitigating measures and multilevel governance contexts impact political trust? We study this question by means of a systematic literature review of papers on crisis mitigating measures and/or MLG systems, and political trust, whereby political trust is the dependent variable (and not the independent as in a lot of the literature). The goal of this research is to systematize and integrate knowledge of these distinct strands of research, searching for overlaps, in order to get more insight in the phenomenon of political trust and prepare the ground for empirical research.