Explaining high and low political trust in Multilevel systems in times of crisis: a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of the 27 EU member states

Research on citizens’ political trust in times of crisis has shown that citizens’ trust matters as an important precondition for the functioning of a political system, especially in times of crisis. The COVID-19 crisis has shown that it is for example linked with vaccination intention and compliance with crisis mitigating measures. The literature on the determinants of political trust in times of crisis, however, often fails to take into account the multilevel structure of political systems. Indeed, crises are increasingly dealt with at different levels of government at the same time, as the COVID-19 crisis and climate change (have) show(ed). Furthermore, much of the research deals with the determinants of political trust at an individual level. Therefore, we propose a different approach and study the conditions that determine political trust in MLG systems in times of crisis at an aggregated level with particular focus on the way in which and at which government level(s) the crisis is governed. We focus on, among others, the degree of cooperation leading up to the taking of a measure, the level at which the measure was taken, and the type of measure. To establish how these variables or conditions play a role in high or low trust in a particular MLG system, we perform fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses (fsQCA) of the 27 EU member states during the COVID-19 crisis. This way, we are able to understand which (combination(s) of) conditions or variables lead to higher or lower political trust at the country-level. We hypothesize that cooperation between levels matters, especially on contentious issues like social restriction measures, and that measures taken at lower levels of government generate more political trust.