Political trust in crisis: an intersectional perspective

High and equally distributed levels of political trust are important for the functioning of democracy, particularly in times of crisis. Only when citizens have trust in those in charge, will difficult decisions be supported by a majority of the population. At the same time, crises have the potential to undermine trust in both, the short and long term, as recent research on the COVID-19 pandemic shows. This is particularly true for those who have been most strongly impacted by the crisis: For instance, during the pandemic, mothers of small children have not only been disproportionally affected by lockdown measures and school closures, but this has also shaped their levels of political trust. These findings are, however, largely based on case studies of single countries. Much of the comparative research on political trust largely disregards the influence of gender, while studies that also take additional, intersecting categories of inequality into account, are virtually absent from the literature. This gap is problematic, since individuals belonging to politically marginalized social groups are not only often most strongly affected – but which groups are affected, and to which degree, differs substantially across countries. In other words, we can expect that the degree to which crises impact political trust of marginalised groups is highly context-dependent. However, this has not yet been systematically and comparatively explored. This study addresses this gap by describing levels of political trust of men and women, and of social groups experiencing intersecting inequalities – migrant women, mothers and women with low socioeconomic status – both over time and in cross-country comparison. Using pooled data from the 25 countries that have participated in at least six rounds of the European Social Survey, the study first describes aggregated trust levels of different groups over time – focusing in particular on changes during the economic crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. In a second step, it zooms in on the COVID-19 pandemic, examining the contextual factors, such as pandemic policies, that could explain political trust and differences between the groups. Thus, the study furthers our understanding of the intersectional impact of crises on political trust.