Economic performance and political trust

The relationships among objective macroeconomic outcomes, subjective evaluations, and political trust are widely studied. Yet, these relationships are not as straightforward as they might seem. This chapter first provides an overview of the main theoretical propositions in the literature as well as their critiques. Next, the chapter analyzes empirical analyses of the relationship between economic performance and political trust. While subjective evaluations of the economy are consistently related to political trust across the globe, the effect of objective macroeconomic performance depends on theoretical and methodological specifications. Objective performance indicators determine political trust in longitudinal rather than in cross-sectional analyses, suggesting that citizens’ historical rather than cross-national comparison of the state of their economy lies at the basis of this effect.