Increasingly Connected: Public Service Dissatisfaction and Political Distrust in Europe, 2008-2016
Welfare State Legitimacy in Times of Crisis and Austerity, Edited by Bart Meuleman, Wim van Oorschot, and Tijs Laenen, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019 Forthcoming
23 Pages Posted: 15 Dec 2018
Date Written: November 23, 2018
Abstract
The dramatic economic and political developments since 2008 brought renewed attention to how Europeans evaluate the institutions and outcomes of their political systems. This paper studies evaluations of the performance of welfare state policies (shorthand: performance evaluations), with a particular focus on how central public service evaluations impact on generalized confidence in democratic institutions (shorthand: political trust). Using European Social Survey Data (-2016), we ask two sets of empirical questions. First, has such performance dissatisfaction increased between 2008 and 2016? Second, have the previously well-established negative effect of dissatisfaction on political distrust become stronger? In both cases, we assess if any changes are more pronounced in countries more strongly exposed to crisis and austerity policies.
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