More Money, Higher Trust? Does Subsidies Affect the Trust Towards Institutions on Various Levels

The proposed paper seeks to answer the question national and EU subsidies affects political trust towards institutions on local, regional, national and supra-national level. Following literature on pork-barrel politics, one would expect that the an organization providing money should be awarded by citizens who benefit from obtaining of subsidy. I expect that people living in municipality, where some subsidies from institutions on higher levels were used to improve public sphere will have more positive view towards these institutions compared to people from municipalities without obtained subsidy what would be observable in a different level of trust. Trust is measured by the question in surveys. I use data from 20 surveys conducted in the period 2012-2018 in the Czech Republic, which includes information about municipality where the interview with respondent was conducted. The survey data are joined with data about subsidies provided by Ministry of Finance. Analysis is conducted on the case of the Czech Republic which is good case to analyze because country is eligible to obtain regional subsidies from the EU, country follows multilevel system of governance, and many small municipalities (6250) make more likely voters in municipality to know about subsidies.