• Difference-in-differences analyses show that refugee arrivals may reduce political trust in host communities. • The negative effect is stronger among people with lower education. • It is important to mitigate negative consequences of arrivals in host communities to uphold political legitimacy. Previous research shows that the arrival of forcibly displaced people may have a considerable impact on the economy and on livelihoods within host communities. This is particularly the case in many African countries, which host many of the world’s refugees, but may have limited capacity to handle sudden influxes of people. Yet the bulk of research on refugee arrivals and public opinion is conducted in wealthy, Western contexts. In this article, we start addressing this gap by assessing the effect of forced displacement on trust in national and local authorities. Theoretically, we draw on the literatures on the consequences of forced migration and political trust. Empirically, we rely on seven rounds of georeferenced Afrobarometer data (N = 228,242) combined with data on migrant settlements from the UNHCR People of Concern database to estimate a set of difference-in-differences regression models. We also test whether individual educational attainment moderates the effect of displacement. We find that camp establishment reduces both forms of political trust, and the effect is more pronounced among host community members with less education. This underscores the importance of human development in bolstering the host community’s coping capacity when new camps are established.

This dataset was collected during the UEFA EURO football championship in 2024. It provides match-contingent experience sampling data, including (a) individual-level variables such as life satisfaction, (b) interpersonal variables such as prosocial intent, and (c) broader societal variables such as political trust. The data points are nested in a sample of N = 1,012 individuals from five countries (England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland). Using an event-sampling method with four to eight measurement waves (depending on how far the national team progressed in the tournament), we captured time-sensitive fluctuations in a total of m = 30 variables in response to the national team's objective (i.e., win, draw, loss) and perceived success. In addition, the dataset contains moderating variables including Big-5 personality traits, conspiracy and free-will beliefs, or alcohol consumption and betting behaviors, and detailed match-specific data (e.g., shots on target, yellow cards, attendance). Our data descriptor portrays the methodological approach, data collection procedures, and available variables, and outlines how the data may be used for future research.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the evolving profile of voters supporting Poland's Law and Justice party (PiS) between 2012 ande 2023, asking: How have individual-level traits shaped electoral support for PiS across its transition between opposition and government? Using lagged instrumental variable probit models across multiple survey waves, we find that conditional on electoral participation, political trust and dissatisfaction with governance were the primary drivers of the vote in 2012, reflecting PiS's outsider status. During PiS's tenure, satisfaction with governance showed intermittent positive effects, while religiosity emerged as the most consistent predictor from 2018 onwards.

ABSTRACT This article examines how the news audience in an autocratizing society judges the efficacy of the news media to carry out its normative roles and functions. When a society undergoes autocratization, the news media are subjected to increasing political control and may frequently self-censor. Unwillingness to report on sensitive information and viewpoints can limit the media’s ability to facilitate deliberation and inform the public. However, citizens with different political values and attitudes may understand self-censorship differently, leading to varying relationships between perceived media self-censorship and perceived news efficacy. Analysis of survey data from Hong Kong shows that perceived media self-censorship leads to lower levels of perceived news efficacy only among people with low levels of political trust and weak beliefs in law and order. For people who trust the political system and value law and order, perceived media self-censorship relates positively to perceived news efficacy. General theoretical implications are discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic revived longstanding claims that democratic governance limits rapid and effective crisis response. While authoritarian regimes are often credited with institutional agility derived from centralized authority and coercive capacity, democracies must operate through accountability, legal constraint, and public consent. This paper argues that the missing link in explaining democratic crisis performance is political trust. Specifically, it theorizes political trust as a mediating mechanism between democratic institutional structures and crisis governance outcomes. Distinguishing between diffuse trust in democracy as a regime type and issue-specific trust in crisis management, the paper demonstrates that high levels of generalized regime trust are not a necessary condition for democratic agility. Rather, domain-specific trust in governmental competence and intentions during emergencies can generate voluntary compliance that substitutes for coercion. Using a case study of Ghana's COVID-19 response, the analysis shows how crisis-specific trust enabled swift policy implementation, widespread public adherence to restrictions, and the preservation of democratic norms. The findings refine debates on regime type and crisis governance by demonstrating that democratic agility is conditional and mediated by trust, rather than structurally determined by institutional form. By foregrounding political trust as a functional governance resource, the paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how democracies can act decisively in emergencies while maintaining constitutional integrity.

Globalisation and political trust: Evidence of a nuanced relationship

This study examines young people’s perceptions of the Free Nutritious Meal Program (Makan Bergizi Gratis/MBG) and its impact on public trust in the government. The MBG program is one of the Indonesian government’s strategic policies aimed at improving nutritional quality, particularly for students, while supporting social welfare and human resource development toward Indonesia Emas 2045. In the digital era, social media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion, especially among Generation Z, who actively consume and disseminate information through online platforms. This research employed a qualitative descriptive approach with in-depth interviews, social media observations, and documentation studies as data collection techniques. The participants consisted of young people aged 18–25 years in Bandar Lampung selected through purposive sampling. The findings indicate that most informants perceive the MBG program positively because it is considered relevant to community needs, particularly in improving children’s nutrition and supporting economically vulnerable groups. However, public trust in the government remains conditional due to concerns regarding transparency, uneven distribution, food quality, and program supervision. The study also reveals that young people distinguish between support for the program itself and trust in the government as an institution. Positive perceptions of the program can increase political trust, but implementation weaknesses may reduce confidence in government performance. Therefore, transparency, consistency, and effective public communication are essential factors in strengthening public trust and ensuring the sustainability of the MBG program.

Political accountability depends on citizens’ ability to critically evaluate institutional performance and bestow trust accordingly. Such evaluative judgments require both cognitive skills to process political information and normative standards against which institutional behavior is assessed. While adults’ trust is known to respond to institutional performance, it remains unclear whether similar evaluative mechanisms operate among adolescents, who are still maturing cognitively and politically. Drawing on developmental psychology literature and evaluative theories of political trust, this study examines how adolescents’ political trust is shaped by macro-level institutional quality and individual-level cognitive and normative resources. Using multi-level moderated mediation models and data from the 2022 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, covering 14-year-olds across 24 countries (N = 82,321), the study provides the first cross-national test of the evaluative nature of political trust in early adolescence. The results show that institutional quality influences political trust entirely indirectly through performance evaluations, with stronger responsiveness among adolescents with higher civic knowledge and stronger democratic norms. These findings demonstrate that political trust among emerging citizens reflects not only traditional socialization but also adolescents’ own appraisal of political institutions. The study advances theories of micro- and macro-level political socialization and highlights the importance of cognitive and normative resources in the early development of political trust.

Community engagement and grassroots visibility have long been recognized as critical determinants of political trust and civic participation. This paper examines how consistent, embodied participation in community activities — exemplified by recreational activities such as pickleball — enables political and civic leaders to cultivate social capital, build interpersonal trust, and reinforce democratic accountability at the grassroots level. Drawing on Putnam's (2000) framework of social capital, Norris's (2004) civic voluntarism model, and empirical studies on participatory governance in Southeast Asia, this study argues that physical presence and recreational co-participation are not peripheral to political leadership but constitute a substantive form of democratic practice. The paper contextualises this argument within the competitive electoral landscape of Singapore's Ang Mo Kio Group Representation Constituency (AMKGRC), where opposition parties such as the Workers' Party (WP) have increasingly signalled interest. Findings suggest that sustained, visible community engagement — particularly through shared recreational and social activities — functions as a strategic platform for credibility-building, constituent relationship management, and electoral resilience. The paper concludes with recommendations for smaller parties and independent civic leaders seeking to leverage non-conventional engagement strategies in high-density urban constituencies.

Crisis vulnerability and social stratification: Educational inequalities in political trust dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic

This article examines the peculiarities of coordinating the foreign policy directions of states within modern regional integration associations under conditions of international environment transformation and the intensification of global challenges. The relevance of the topic is determined by the necessity to align the national interests of member countries with the collective objectives of regional cooperation. Among the key issues identified are uneven political priorities among states, differences in levels of integration and interaction, and difficulties in developing common decisions in international policy. The purpose of the study is to identify the main instruments for coordinating foreign policy actions within integration associations and to assess their effectiveness in contemporary geopolitical conditions. Comparative, systemic, and institutional approaches were applied in the research process together with methods of political analysis, forecasting, and generalization of international practice. An examination of the activities of the European Union, ASEAN, the African Union, and MERCOSUR enabled the identification of specific features of interstate interaction models in the sphere of foreign policy. Findings demonstrate that the highest level of effectiveness is achieved through mechanisms based on institutional coherence, diplomatic dialogue, and multilevel cooperation. The obtained results indicate that regional integration structures are gradually strengthening their role in international relations by developing common positions on security, economic, and humanitarian issues. At the same time, the effectiveness of collective actions depends on political trust among participants, stability of institutional systems, and the ability to respond to changes in the international environment. The article proposes a conceptual approach to assessing the effectiveness of foreign policy interaction, encompassing institutional, strategic, communicative, security, and diplomatic components, enabling a comprehensive analysis of the degree of coordination in international decision-making and the effectiveness of joint activities among participating states. Conclusions substantiate that improving the mechanisms of foreign policy interaction is an important prerequisite for strengthening regional stability, enhancing the international influence of integration associations, and ensuring an effective response to contemporary challenges. Prospects for further research include analyzing the digitalization of diplomatic processes, developing multilateral cooperation and adapting integration models to the new conditions of global politics.

ABSTRACT A substantial body of research has investigated the determinants of conspiratorial beliefs, yet little is known about different conspiracy theory endorsement profiles. The present study used cluster analysis on a set of 52 conspiratorial statements tapping into six conspiracy theory types to identify and validate conspiracy theory endorsement clusters in a randomly drawn sample of the Finnish population ( N = 1077). The cluster solution was then further validated in a social media‐based convenience sample ( N = 772). Four conspiracy theory endorsement clusters with distinct profiles were identified and validated across the samples. Participants who belonged to more conspiracy theory‐endorsing clusters held more pseudoscientific beliefs and had lower political trust than participants in the less conspiracy theory‐endorsing clusters. Mixed results were found concerning demographic differences. The results provide strong evidence for the existence of four conspiracy theory endorsement profiles and support the notion of a general conspiracy mindset.

ABSTRACT This article investigates two questions. Conceptually, it examines the formation of political trust amid expanding state power over a chilling civil society. This question echoes to the persistent scholarly concerns over the retreats of democratic institutions and practices under both liberal and authoritative contexts. Empirically, this article addresses an intriguing finding deriving from two populational surveys of Hong Kong in 2020 and 2024. Despite advancing state power over local civil society since the enactment of the National Security Law (NSL) in mid-2020, the political trust of people to the state authorities increased in early 2020s. Regression analyses of survey data exhibit that dutiful citizenship, which embodies a normative sense of civic duties and responsibilities; and external efficacy, reflecting a belief in the effectiveness of political and social systems, explained the increment of political trust. Further scrutiny, however, unravels that collective efficacy, which represents citizens’ belief in the influence of collective actions on political outcomes, negatively mediated the positive relationship between dutiful citizenship and political trust in 2020, but not in 2024. The findings illustrate how a muted civil society under rising state power affects the formation of political trust.

As governments increasingly turn to participation to increase political trust among their citizens, it becomes urgent to understand the relationship between participation and trust. We explore how participants of two case studies – in invited spaces and citizens’ governance spaces – perceive the influence of their participation on political trust. We find that both government responsiveness and citizens’ expectations affect political trust. In the case of citizens’ governance spaces, governments can meet the expectations of citizens, and political trust increases. However, in the case study on invited spaces, citizens expect more of the government than it can deliver, which negatively impacts citizens’ trust. This challenges assumptions both about participation raising trust no matter what happens, and about the ‘Matthew-effect’, which predicts that savvy citizens will see their trust rise easily. Raising trust at the level of participatory spaces requires calibration of mutual ambitions rather than mere ‘expectation management’.

Transboundary haze is a recurrent hazard in Borneo that elevates particulate exposure to health-relevant levels. We conducted a community-based cross-sectional survey of adults across Sarawak, Malaysia, using multistage sampling (n = 481) to assess haze-related protective self-care behaviours during haze. The primary outcome was a Likert-based self-care index categorised into Poor/Moderate/Good using sample quartiles. Determinants included haze tolerance score (as operationalised in this study), political trust, perceived costs, haze knowledge, and community resilience, alongside sociodemographic and access indicators. Analyses included zonal comparisons and proportional odds regression with sensitivity analyses using multinomial regression and the continuous self-care score. Only 25.6% achieved good self-care, while 49.3% were moderate; self-care differed by zone, with the Northern zone scoring highest despite lower trust/knowledge profiles. In adjusted ordinal models, proximity to a health facility was associated with a higher self-care category (OR 3.38, 95% CI 2.17–5.27; p < 0.001), while unmarried status was associated with a lower category (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.28–0.82; p = 0.007). Higher tolerance score (OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.09–1.28; p < 0.001) and haze knowledge (OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.07–1.30; p = 0.001) were positively associated, whereas community resilience showed a small inverse association (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.93–0.99; p = 0.013). These findings underscore the importance of actionable know-how and practical access to support higher self-care categories. A trigger-based playbook linking API/PM2.5 thresholds to behaviourally specific messaging and provision of effective respirators and clean-air options warrants evaluation to strengthen population protection during seasonal haze.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-49870-9.

Abstract Rural Americans constitute a politically consequential yet theoretically understudied identity group. This study reconceptualizes descriptive representation to include place-based identities and demonstrates its influence on policy support and political trust. Using a preregistered, original survey experiment of rural respondents, we assess whether rural Americans exhibit greater support for laws and perceive it as more beneficial to rural communities when proposed by state representatives who share their rural identity. Our findings strongly support this hypothesis: rural Americans express higher levels of support for laws that were introduced by descriptively representative lawmakers and are more likely to believe such policies benefit rural areas. Moreover, respondents demonstrate higher levels of trust in rural lawmakers even in the absence of additional information about them. These results illustrate that, for rural Americans, place-based identity is deeply influential in shaping their political perceptions.

While interest in the determinants of religiosity has grown, few studies have explored the role of social mobility in shaping religious beliefs. This study examines the relationship between perceptions of upward and downward social mobility (PUSM/PDSM) and religiosity in China using a diagonal reference model. Drawing on the Chinese Social Survey, we found no significant relationship between PUSM and religious beliefs, whereas PDSM was positively associated with religiosity. Further analysis revealed that political trust and perceptions of government performance mediated the link between PDSM and religious beliefs. These findings highlight religion’s role as a coping mechanism during socioeconomic hardship, suggesting that faith in a higher power may compensate for declining trust in political institutions. Given China’s strong secular tradition, stringent religious regulations, and the availability of alternative coping mechanisms, it is unlikely that religiosity will see a significant rise in the near future despite potential growth at the grassroots level.

The Barisan Nasional government in Malaysia governed for 61 years, making it one of the longest-serving administrations in the world until it was defeated by the Pakatan Harapan coalition in the 14th and 15th general elections. First-time voters play a critical role in shaping election outcomes. This study aims to examine the factors influencing the trust of first-time voters in political parties and investigate any differences in political trust between genders. The research focuses on first-time voters, specifically students at a prominent university in Kelantan, Malaysia. Using a stratified sampling method, questionnaires were distributed to 319 selected first-time voters. The study employs Multiple Linear Regression and Independent T-test for data analysis. The findings reveal that party image (β=0.326), party services (β=0.215), and party reputation (β=0.447) significantly (p-value&lt;0.05 affect political trust, with party reputation being the most influential factor. Additionally, there is no statistically significant difference in political trust between genders (T=1.06, p-value=0.29). These insights are expected to help political parties build trust among first-time voters and inform strategic planning for future elections.

This article investigates twenty-first-century literary depictions of contestations between the nuclear surveillance infrastructures of two of the largest democracies in the world—the United States and India. Recognizing that these disputes have shaped US-India relations since Indian independence from colonial British rule in 1947, this article examines how themes of deception—central to Cold War spy fiction—appear in contemporary literary works about surveillance conflicts between the two nations. These texts reflect mutual distrust: American surveillance portrays India as an irresponsible postcolonial nuclear power, while Indian countersurveillance depicts the US as a hypocritical and coercive hegemon who enables Pakistan’s nuclear program. With reference to these strategic conflicts over the politics and logic of knowledge about nuclear materials, infrastructures, bodies, ideas, and motivations, this article critically analyzes representative texts: an American novel and an Indian novel series—the American diplomat Matthew Palmer’s novel Secrets of State (2015) and the Indian novelist Shaunak Agarkhedkar’s tetralogy Let Bhutto Eat Grass (2017–2022). In revealing behind-the-scenes machinations of nuclear surveillance, this article highlights how literary productions are key cultural conduits for underscoring the importance of mutual trust in nuclear politics. Such trust, as the texts examined here show, requires moving beyond the rigid cycle of hiding and exposing secrets that has long characterized—and may still define—the tense relationship between two nuclear democracies, the United States of America and India.

ABSTRACT Over the past decades, the study of trust transitions has emerged as a crucial academic topic. Using data from four large-scale social surveys conducted over the past 30 years in China, this paper introduces a theoretical model of political trust transition characterized by cyclical activities: trust equilibrium, the inflection point, and trust reconstruction. We employ focusing event analysis to explore how internal and external forces drive these cycles, thereby facilitating transitions in political trust. Our findings illustrate that political trust in China experiences dynamic cycles influenced by socio-political events and policy changes. This study contributes to theoretical discussions by mapping trust transitions within a non-democratic context and highlights the impact of government actions, media, and cultural factors on political trust. We advocate for further research on the dynamic mechanisms of political trust transition from a diachronic perspective to understand better the stabilization and destabilization of trust over time.