Political Trust, Polarization and Support for Defense Spending in Lithuania

Political trust plays a key role during crises such as COVID-19 pandemic: it eases the public compliance with public policies and influences related societal attitudes (Devine et al. 2024). After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, questions of international security and need for stronger military capabilities became much more salient in the West and particularly in the Central and Eastern Europe. This need arises in times when political discontent and polarization raise serious challenges for European democracies. Previous research points to a conditionality of relationship between the trust and defense issues. In normal times, policies that benefit everybody (on average) such as defense spending should not activate political trust (Hetherington 2005). However, this may change in times when foreign and defense policies become more salient: effects of trust on defense preferences increase when media focuses on these issues (Hetherington and Husser 2012). In theory, such conditionality does not bring good news for countries that first, have low trust in political institutions, and second, have high need for increased defense spending due to neighboring countries that pursue aggressive foreign policy. Polarization according to these issues (defense spending and political trust) may complicate search for societal consensus even more. In this paper, I choose to analyse Lithuania: EU and NATO member that has a border with Russia and relatively low levels of political trust. Comparison of survey data from before and after the start of Russian invasion of Ukraine show increased level of societal support for the higher defense spending. At the same time, empirical analysis revels rather clear correlation between political trust and varying degrees of this support at the individual level. This relationship is linked to a specific type of polarization, where parties and presidential candidates sort according to differing degrees of their voters’ political trust and foreign policy attitudes (including defense spending). On one side of spectrum, we have right-wing voters with highest levels of trust and support for defense spending and on the other side – electorate of populists that question the Lithuanian foreign policy and capitalize on the mistrust. Most interestingly, this type of polarization and issue clustering is weakly related to the economic left-and right: however, it correlates with the cultural attitudes such as support for same-sex marriage. Panel survey data (three waves during the 2024) gives additional insights into the changes of political trust and attitudes towards the defense spending during electoral period. However, preliminary analysis show little evidence that levels and relationship changed much (despite the defeat of centre-right government in 2024 elections).