Max Puelma Touzel
@mptouzel.bsky.social
367 followers 980 following 394 posts
Staff Research Scientist@Mila/complexdatalab.com Getting at the psycho-social in our digital spaces with models and data with the aim to make better ones mptouzel.github.io correlated diffusion over AI/ML/(MA)RL/psych/soc/media/pol/econ/energy
![A Crisis of Political Trust? Global Trends in Institutional Trust from 1958 to 2019
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2025
Viktor Valgarðsson
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,
Will Jennings
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,
Gerry Stoker
,
Hannah Bunting
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,
Daniel Devine
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,
Lawrence McKay
and
Andrew Klassen
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Abstract
In the study of politics, many theoretical accounts assume that we are experiencing a ‘crisis of democracy’, with declining levels of political trust. While some empirical studies support this account, others disagree and report ‘trendless fluctuations’. We argue that these empirical ambiguities are based on analytical confusion: whether trust is declining depends on the institution, country, and period in question. We clarify these issues and apply our framework to an empirical analysis that is unprecedented in geographic and temporal scope: we apply Bayesian dynamic latent trait models to uncover underlying trends in data on trust in six institutions collated from 3,377 surveys conducted by 50 projects in 143 countries between 1958 and 2019. We identify important differences between countries and regions, but globally we find that trust in representative institutions has generally been declining in recent decades, whereas trust in ‘implementing’ institutions has been stable or rising.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2c4hmyxdfk4aky3jeoulhog5/bafkreib2bswqycvx3qt6eexr5ighscm5b2cqe5o54de5gvqzdsivwrioka)
