Public versus Private: The Conditional Effect of State Policy and Institutional Trust on Mass Opinion

Abstract

Is there a link between the size of a country's public sector and attitudes towards privatization and individual responsibility? If so, is this connection conditioned by people's level of trust in institutions? This article uses multilevel analysis to investigate the relationship between state policy and public opinion, using three measures of economic left–right attitudes as dependent variables. My starting point is the adjustment hypothesis. A new postulate based on the theory of cognitive dissonance is presented, which is the conditional adjustment hypothesis. My argument is that when investigating the policy-opinion link, we should not focus on the aggregated public opinion, but rather differentiate according to each individual's level of trust in institutions. The hypotheses are tested using individual-level data that are available from the OECD countries, drawn from the 1990 and 2000 waves of the World Values Survey. The findings of this research indicate that while the adjustment hypothesis is firmly rejected in all models, the conditional adjustment hypothesis receives some support. On the individual level, income proves to be the strongest determinant of left–right opinions.