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ABSTRACT
The political effects of the Great Recession on southern Europe were substantial. The rapid economic deterioration of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain from 2008 onwards was accompanied by an increase in citizens’ dissatisfaction towards national political institutions. The sources of political mistrust in the southern periphery were of a political and economic nature. Using quantitative data from EU member states from 2000 to 2015, this paper evaluates the suitability of competing theories in explaining this shift in political attitudes in southern European countries. It first hypothesizes that political mistrust is explained by citizens’ rationalist evaluations of changing macroeconomic performance. It also hypothesizes that political mistrust changes according to institutional performance. The paper argues that economic crises act as an external shock that places politics, politicians and institutions in the spotlight as a result of citizens’ deteriorating performance of the economy. The findings suggest that unemployment, public debt and political corruption are key variables in understanding short-term changes in political mistrust.
Notes
1. The recovery of political trust in Greece was probably due to the victory of Syriza in the legislative elections of January 2015. As part of the reward‒punish mechanisms in democracies, elections tend to momentarily increase trust towards institutions. However, it remains to be seen if trust levels remain high after Tsipras’ acceptance of the conditions of a third €86 billion bailout on 12 July 2015. The last Eurobarometer survey included in our dataset is from March 2015.
2. More specifically, we have used the question that asks EU citizens: ‘I would like to ask you a question about how much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the following institutions, please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?’ The respondent is then presented with a range of institutions and three possible answers: ‘Tend to trust’, ‘Tend not to trust’ or ‘Do not know’.
3. Anderson (Citation2000) further suggests that the governing party target size is also a good indicator; however, this is irrelevant for the study of trust, as it is not only targeted towards the incumbent party.