The state and its schooled elite across 84 countries: Educational differences in political trust depend on the schooled society and sector of employment

Abstract Educational attainment is related to more political trust. In this study, we adopt a global perspective, arguing that this ‘education effect’ is conditional on the development of ‘schooled societies’. In such societies, schooling as a central institution installs educational attainment as a main source of social status, granting the higher educated a dominant position in the political field. Consequently, higher educated citizens have high levels of political trust, while the less educated are distrusting. In less schooled societies, however, the ‘education effect’ is more ambiguous, as the social status of the higher educated is less guaranteed and depends on their relationship to the state. Consequently, there may be a large gap in political trust between those who are publicly employed and those who are not. We, therefore, examined the relationship among educational attainment, a schooled society, sector of employment, and political trust. We combined the Schooled Society Index with data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study. Multilevel analyses across 84 countries ( N individual = 102,102) revealed that the positive relationship between educational attainment and political trust was conditional on the development of ‘schooled’ society. Furthermore, in less strongly schooled societies, there was an important gap in political trust among the higher educated, depending on whether or not they were publicly employed. Such patterns cannot be explained by educational differences in political knowledge or cognitive sophistication. In contrast, our results imply that the ‘educational effect’ on political trust is strongly dependent on the social status of education-based groups.