Political Trust in Crisis: Can Social Protection Make a Difference?

How do economic crises harm political trust? And can their impact be mitigated? Using data from Eurofound’s Living, working, and COVID-19 survey conducted across the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic, I find that economic performance and social protection are strongly correlated with political trust in such contexts, however independently from each other. While deteriorating economic conditions severely harm trust, social protection can subsequently temper this negative impact. More specifically, in the case of the COVID-19 crisis, the deferral of debt and taxes, followed by support from public services and wage support mitigated the most the negative impact of the crisis on political trust. However, I find this mitigating effect to be only moderate as trust attitudes are likely to be affected by a negativity bias. In other words, the positive effect of receiving state support on political trust is systematically inferior to the negative effect of the crisis. Because of this bias, governments are more likely to be punished by citizens for what the crisis has done to them than to be rewarded for what they have done for them.