FÖRTROENDE FÖR REGERINGAR OCH MYNDIGHETER I EN ANNORLUNDA TID- En kvantitativ studie på hur förtroendet för 41 länders regeringar och myndigheters krishantering ser ut till följd av coronapandemin.

Abstract

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to provide an understanding of how crisis management during the corona pandemic affects trust in government and authorities. It also explores whether Sweden, with its different strategy, deviates from other countries in terms of levels of trust or if it follows a general pattern. I test three hypotheses drawn from the literature. The first is styled around the Rally round’ the flag hypothesis and suggests that trust in government might increase during extreme crises events. The other two hypotheses are based around a ‘reputation costs’ idea and test whether the strictness of the measures, affect levels of trust. The hypotheses are tested using a quantitative methodology, for two crisis waves, one between march-june and one between july-november 2020. I find that by and large trust levels follow an expected pattern whereby poor handling of the pandemic diminishes trust in government. From the appearing pattern in my graphs, however, one can detect ‘rally round’ the flag’ cases, Sweden possibly being on of them. I observe interesting patterns when it comes to the effects of the severity of measures on trust, as the direction of the effect appears to be dependent the crisis wave. Since some of the overall correlations in the 41country cases in my data do not return statistically significant results I proceed with caution in my interpretations. The study aims to contribute to the existing research on trust in political institutions during crises, especially during this special case of a global pandemic.