Abstract
Much research intro political trust—its causes, correlates and trends—builds on the twin assumptions that trust in a wide range of political institutions is ultimately an expression of (1) a singular and (2) a cross-nationally equivalent underlying attitude. Yet, the widespread assumptions of unidimensionality and cross-national equivalence of political trust is at odds with the dominant conceptual understanding of political trust as a relational concept, driven by subjects, objects, and their interplay. This paper employs Rasch modelling as a direct, strict test of unidimensionality, equivalence and item hierarchy. We test the fit of the Rasch model on political trust items in seven widely used, cross-national surveys (World Values Survey, Afrobarometer, Arabbarometer, Asian Barometer, Eurobarometer, European Social Survey, and Latinobarometro), covering 161 national surveys in 119 countries across the globe. We find that the unidimensional specification of the Rasch model does not fit the standard political trust question batteries. Political trust is not cross-nationally equivalent; trust in specific political institutions is more than a mere indicator of an underlying attitude. This conclusion does not impede cross-national research into political trust; rather it illustrates the need for consistent robustness checks across a range of objects of political trust. Our findings open up new venues for substantive research questions on specific objects of political trust and their relationships.
Highlights
Political trust research has been considered a necessary requirement for democratic resilience (Zmerli and Van der Meer 2017; Citrin and Stoker 2018)
Rather than a showcase and detailed introduction to the Rasch model, this paper aims to answer a question with rather substantive implications: Do political trust survey measures meet the demands of the Rasch model? We test the unidimensionality of political trust across seven widely used, cross-national data sets spanning the globe, and under a variety of methodological choices
The vast and expanding empirical literature on the causes, correlates, and crises of political trust has built on the twin assumptions that political trust is unidimensional and crossnationally equivalent
Summary
Political trust research has been considered a necessary requirement for democratic resilience (Zmerli and Van der Meer 2017; Citrin and Stoker 2018). Esaiasson 2011; Hakhverdian and Mayne 2012; Bargsted et al 2017), correlates (e.g., Voogd and Dassonneville 2018; Choi and Kwon 2019), and supposed crisis (e.g., Norris 2011; Van Erkel and Van der Meer 2016). This empirical literature on political trust builds on widely shared assumptions that trust is unidimensional as well as cross-nationally equivalent. The twin assumptions of unidimensionality and cross-national equivalence allowed scholars to rely on single political trust indicators or political trust scales as more or less interchangeable indicators of a singular underlying concept
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