Political Trust: Why Context Matters

Edited by Sonja Zmerli and Marc Hooghe

In this book the issue of political trust is approached from several perspectives. The first chapters examine empirical evidence describing the nature and evolution of political trust, following chapters go on to explore how political trust can be explained and what elements seem to have the strongest influence on the level of trust. More specifically, the editors take a comparative approach and ask why people evaluate the trustworthiness of political institutions the way they do. Another focus of the empirical comparative studies in this volume is post-communist societies and countries in transition. The extent to which support of welfare state reforms is at the origins of, but also subject to, political trust is explored in the concluding chapters.

Related Subjects

• Political Theory

Series

• ECPR Studies in European Politics

About the Author

SONJA ZMERLI is Researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Research at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main and at the Institute of Political Science at the Technische Universität Darmstadt. Her research interests focus on social capital, political trust, political participation, welfare state regimes and inequality. She has published in several edited volumes and international journals such as American Behavioral Scientist, European Political Science, European Political Science Review, and Public Opinion Quarterly. MARC HOOGHE is Professor of Political Science at the University of Leuven (Belgium) and the University of Lille (France). Recently he has published on electoral reform in Belgium (West European Politics, 2011) and behavioural consequences of political trust (European Journal of Political Research, 2011).

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