It is widely accepted that citizens’ trust is important for the state of democracy and for the correct functioning of the social, economic and political life. Political trust is relevant for economic growth, health, happiness, life satisfaction or democratic stability (Zmerli and Newton 2011). Also, political trust is linked to different elements of the political system such are authorities and political institutions (Easton 1965, Dalton 2004, Marien 2011). In general terms the consideration is that in those societies where trust in political institutions is higher, the healthier the democracy is, to the extent that trust is necessary for the stability, viability and vitality of democracy (Hardin 1999; Warren 1999). Nevertheless, a significant fall in trust has been detected within Spanish citizens along the current economic crisis: rapid changes associated to the specific context might be having a serious effect on the normal functioning of democracy, for which it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the phenomena. This paper seeks to address the question of political trust in the specific context of deep economic crisis. Concretely, I pursue to diagnose intra-individual change in trust in Parliament, political parties and government under the specific context of deep economic crisis by analyzing an online panel survey conducted in Spain (2010-2013). Thus, the main hypothesis of work relies on the idea that economic personal grievances originated due to the economic crisis –situation of unemployment, loss of income– affect how individuals trust in their political institutions. Contrary to expectations, preliminary findings only confirm this theory partially. This motivates the suggestion of an alternative explanation, based on the sociotropic component of the specific attitude of trust, according to which individuals perceptions of personal economic situation is not a basis for punishing the institutions of the representative democracy.
