POLITICAL TRUST IN THE EU DURING THE EUROZONE DEBT CRISIS A quantitative study on the role of benchmarks in citizens' evaluations of institutional performance

Abstract

During the Eurozone debt crisis the European Union (EU) responded with policy measures contrary to public preferences, which contributed to an erosion of trust. Thus, threatening the stability, effectiveness, and democratic legitimacy of the Union. According to the trust-as-evaluation approach, political trust is derived from citizens' evaluations of institutional performance. Hence, citizens tend to trust institutions that perform well. However, the same institution might be judged differently depending on the benchmark, or reference point, against which citizens make their evaluations of institutional performance. Although previous research reveals that the positive relationship between trust in the EU and national institutions intensified during the economic crisis, the role of the national context as a benchmark has received little, if any, attention. The limited existing research centers on a single EU institution. Therefore, this study examines the effect of the EU policy differential on trust in the EU in all twenty-seven EU member states using Eurobarometer surveys from 2010 to 2012. The EU policy differential is a relative value of EU and national performance. Thus, it ensures that benchmarks are properly modeled since it considers the comparative nature of citizens' evaluations of the EU's trustworthiness. The results of the logistic regression analysis reveal that the EU policy differential has a positive and significant effect on trust in the EU, even after controlling for institutionalist and socio-demographic factors. These findings present broader implications for our understanding of the evaluative nature of political trust that are relevant to improve trust levels in multilevel governance systems.