Building Trust in Political Office: Testing the Efficacy of Political Contact and Authentic Communication

Abstract

While a large literature interrogates the causes and consequences of declining political trust in democracies, considerably less work has considered the everyday leadership strategies that might arrest this trend. I tackle this gap as I ask: what can politicians do to build trust? Going beyond the performance perspective current in political science, I suggest that all politicians can build trust by (1) increasing occasions for political contact and (2) utilising authentic political communication. These arguments are developed out of interviews with national politicians in five democracies (N = 51) and tested empirically with observational and experimental survey data gathered from a longitudinal sample of the UK public (N = 705). Attesting to academic work on the contact hypothesis and ‘authentic trust’, as well as the testimony of politicians themselves, these analyses suggest that both strategies carry appraisive potential. These findings contribute conceptually and practically to our understanding of both trust and leadership in politics.