Trusting the Untrustworthy: An Exploration of Attitudes Towards the Populist Government in Poland Using Survey Data

Abstract

The study explores attitudinal change in political trust, social trust and satisfaction with the Polish government over the years 2012–2016 using European Social Survey (ESS) data. To trace the attitudinal change, I used a probit model (contemporary measure) instrumenting political trust and satisfaction with governance as two endogenous regressors and created lags corresponding to years before and after the Law and Justice Party came to power. The key finding of the study is that voters dissatisfied with the government before the 2015 election campaign voted for the populist party, while the contemporary measure identified individuals with a higher degree of political trust and those sceptical towards their immediate social circle as supportive of the populist incumbent.