What Makes or Breaks Political Trust: A fixed effects regression analysis of changes in political trust within individuals in the Netherlands between 2008 and 2018.
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2022-08-14
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en
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Political trust is understood as citizens' trust in a set of actors and institutions. Citizens evaluate whether to grant or withhold trust based on previous experiences with actors like the government. Long thought to be important for regime stability, political trust has been studied extensively. The literature can successfully explain differences in political trust between countries but has fewer explanations for differences between and especially within citizens. This thesis examines what can explain differences in political trust in Dutch LISS panel respondents between 2008 and 2018 using individual fixed effects regression analysis to examine panel data on 22801 respondents. In order to find out to what extent changes in an individual's economic position and cultural status can explain differences in political trust in Dutch citizens. Building on precarious work theory to measure someone's economic insecurity and using cultural capital to measure someone's cultural status, this thesis hopes to provide a new theoretical perspective on what can explain differences in political trust at the micro-level. Moreover, utilizing a longitudinal design, the traditional explanations of political trust were examined in a different way than is ordinarily done. The analysis shows that cultural capital is not good at explaining changes in political trust and that economic insecurity explains some changes in political trust but is not as convincing when considering changes in corruption perception and economic performance. The main conclusion is that the conventional explanations also explain changes in political trust within individuals.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen