Before the Omicron variant ran amok inside China in November 2022, the Chinese central government’s dynamic zero-COVID policy effectively contained the spread of the coronavirus and its variants during multiple waves of outbreaks. However, it was not without cost. This study examines the impacts of stringent lockdown interventions on urban residents’ mental health during the initial outbreak of the Omicron variant in the spring of 2022. Using survey data from 522 respondents within the same neighbourhood and a spatial quasi-experimental design, the results show that strict lockdown interventions are significantly related to higher levels of psychological distress after controlling for observed confounders and that lockdown interventions have further spillover effects on mental health for residents in adjacent residential compounds who are otherwise free. Moreover, the results show that the lack of material supplies and medical care plays a more salient role in explaining lockdown effects on psychological distress than residents’ social interaction and trust levels of COVID-19 policy. Policy and intervention implications are also discussed.

How do cities foster political trust among informal workers? This question is particularly salient in Africa's growing cities where local governments must reconcile policy priorities across highly heterogeneous constituencies, including a burgeoning middle-class and a large informal economy. We argue that expectations about reciprocity and procedural justice shape the probability that informal traders trust their local government. In doing so, we analyse a survey of approximately 1000 informal traders in Ghana's three main cities – Accra, Kumasi and Tamale. We find that traders who paid requisite fees to local assemblies and could attribute a benefit from those payments were more likely to trust their local government while those who had experienced harassment by city authorities were less likely to do so. The paper highlights that drivers of trust among diverse urban constituencies deserve greater empirical and comparative attention, especially as countries deepen decentralisation initiatives and cities commit to development goals around inclusivity.

Citizens are more trustful of politics if their preferred party is an electoral winner and becomes part of the government. However, there remains the question of whether this positive effect of joining the government also holds for supporters of populist parties. Populists show low levels of political trust, as they strongly criticize the political elite. This study argues that voters of populist parties perceive the political system as more responsive to their concerns when their preferred party becomes part of the government and so they become more trustful of politics. Drawing on the case of Austria, the analyses demonstrate that political trust among populist party voters is higher when their party is in government. In contrast, non-populist voters' level of political trust is more stable, even when their party is not in government.

Government competence in delivering outcomes is often regarded as foundational to political trust. However, in this article, a different competence dynamic is proposed; specifically, whether political trust is related to government efficiency in achieving promised policy objectives. This article argues that when policy objectives are polarizing, the effect of efficiency on political trust is conditional on whether individuals support or oppose the objective. Using the case of Brexit, where the promised policy objective of leaving the European Union was polarizing, it is hypothesized that Leave voters relative to Remain voters became more trusting in cases of efficiency and less trusting in cases of inefficiency. The predictions are supported through a difference-in-differences analysis of unique real-world data over time from the British Election Study. The findings have important implications for our understanding of Brexit and also inform how political trust relates to government competence in the case of polarizing political issues.

Could an individual’s perception of the possibility of a future ecological crisis be linked to their level of political trust? Studies of environmental attitudes have identified political trust as an important predictor of support for environmental taxation or risk perceptions surrounding specific local environmental hazards, but less is known about its role when environmental risks are perceived as diffuse and distant. Using original survey data from Ecuador, this article finds that political distrust predicts heightened ecological crisis perceptions and that higher educational attainment intensifies this relationship. A follow-up analysis of the AmericasBarometer’s Ecuador survey shows that political distrust also predicts higher concern about climate change. These findings suggest that when evaluations of political institutions reflect perceptions of environmental risks, individuals blame the government for environmental failures. The implications of this study are particularly relevant for political institutions in developing economies, where the public sector often spearheads development efforts.

How are immigrants’ feelings of inclusion and trust in political institutions affected by interactions with the host society? In a field dominated by observational correlation studies, I use a survey experiment in two national contexts to test how perceptions of discrimination and expressions of pro-immigrant support influence non-Western immigrants’ political trust and national belonging. Following standard experimental procedures to test the hypotheses, I attempt to prime perceptions of group discrimination by asking questions about unfair treatment. Expressions of pro-immigrant support are, in turn, primed with facts about public and institutional support for immigrants’ rights. The results from the survey experiment are in line with expectations from prior work in some subgroups and underline the importance of equal treatment to achieve social cohesion. They also paint a rather complex picture of discrimination and its psychological impact. These findings have substantial implications for our understanding of host societies’ roles in immigrant inclusion.

This original analysis of the World Values Survey waves of 2007, 2012 and 2018 reveals important relationships among political trust and satisfaction, happiness, views of corruption, local elections and activism from the last half of the Hu Jintao administration through the first five years of Xi Jinping's rule. These data shed new light on the deeper dynamics underlying the high and growing levels of trust in government documented in other studies. Among this report's more novel findings, we find increased trust in government coincides with decreased local electoral participation, suggesting that participation in local elections is not key to perceptions of regime legitimacy. Views of corruption and a sense of personal efficacy through non-institutionalized forms of political participation such as peaceful demonstrations appear more relevant. Thus, constraints on people's ability to engage in peaceful demonstrations are likely to negatively impact views of regime legitimacy. In addition, the report uncovers demographic variations in these dynamics, indicating that regime legitimacy is more precarious among citizens at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy and among younger Chinese. Overall, these findings complicate existing explanations of regime legitimacy centring on economic performance, nationalism, responsiveness/adaptiveness and efforts to combat corruption.

China's involvement in the world and its economic modernization are expected to lead to its democratization and adherence to the liberal international order. However, after several decades of development, the authoritarian system remains resilient, and China's foreign policy appears to be more assertive. The limited nature of scholarship on the public opinion in a rising power has prevented a better understanding of China's domestic changes and foreign policy. This study seeks to unveil the micro-foundations of the unexpected trajectory of China's rise by investigating the public's national and international orientations using nationwide representative survey data. The results show that international orientations had a very limited effect on Chinese popular attitudes toward domestic politics and foreign relations, while national orientations strengthened public support for the authoritarian system and China's assertive foreign policy. Intergenerational variations existed in public opinion in China, with the Xi generation showing a different pattern of political values than the preceding generations.

Political trust matters for citizens’ policy preferences but existing research has not fully understood how this effect depends on policy design. To advance this research area, we theorise that policy controls that limit or condition policy provision can function as safeguards against uncertainty, thereby compensating for a person’s lack of trust in generating support. Focusing on public preferences for asylum and refugee policy, we conduct an original conjoint experiment in eight European countries. We find that individuals with lower levels of trust in European political institutions are less supportive of policies providing unlimited or unconditional protection and more supportive of restrictive policies. We also show that policy design features such as limits and conditions can mitigate perceived uncertainty for individuals who are less trusting in European political institutions. These findings have important implications for the theoretical understanding of how political trust pertains to citizens’ preferences.

Women have unique experiences during natural disasters, including higher risks of death, violence, and socioeconomic decline and an increase in specific reproductive health needs. However, government responses often do not directly address these women-specific needs, which can decrease women’s political trust. I investigate women’s trust in government institutions when natural disasters have recently occurred and argue that because of their unique experiences and typical government responses, women’s political trust will decline when there is a natural disaster more than men’s. I find that when there is a high number of disasters and when a larger percentage of the population is affected by disasters, women’s political trust decreases significantly, especially institutional trust. These findings are distinct from previous studies that cluster different types of political trust and support the idea that women’s experiences in a disaster may influence their relationship with institutions differently than men’s.

It is widely acknowledged that poor government policy performance undermines public trust in government. However, there has been insufficient study of how citizens attribute responsibility to different levels of government within an authoritarian unitary context. Inquiry is needed to assess the ways government performance in various policy domains affects central–local political trust. This study uses the case of China to addresses these questions. Results show that, in particular, local governments risk losing public trust for corruption. Nevertheless, the central government loses public trust due to unsatisfying economies. Both local and central governments lose public trust for poor performance regarding environmental protection, food safety problems, public health, and primary/middle school education. The central government cannot always avoid blame, depending on different policy issues. The results indicate that the perceived administrative responsibility of different levels of government affects citizens’ evaluations of the performance of the central and local governments as well as their political trust.

In this study, we explored the longitudinal relationship of political trust and subjective political competence during the COVID-19 outbreak. We also examined how levels of political trust and political competence were associated with compliance with COVID-19 recommendations. We used three-wave panel data including 2,205 observations (N = 735) to study changes within and between individuals from 2017 to 2020. The last round of the survey was conducted at the peak of the first wave of COVID-19. The measures included political trust, subjective political competence, political interest, multiple background variables, and measures for compliance with the social distancing recommendations. We found that Finns’ political trust increased significantly during the first wave of COVID-19. The between-individuals analysis suggested that political competence was negatively associated with trust. The results also indicated that citizens’ compliance with COVID-19 recommendations was directly linked to political trust but depended also on the interaction between competence and trust.

Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may ‘crowd out’ the role of trust. We hypothesize that, at the pandemic’s outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

In China, the public has gradually shifted their focus from GDP growth to quality-of-life issues, which imposes new challenges for the government. The food safety problem, as a salient issue, is one such example. This article analyzes how food safety problems affect ordinary Chinese people's trust in the government and their attribution of governmental responsibility using nationally representative survey data. As food safety risks are unequally distributed in China, the political impact of food safety problems varies among people of different socioeconomic statuses. The results show that food safety problems weaken the public's trust in both the central and local governments, but this negative effect is attenuated among people with a low level of education. Moreover, the Chinese public tends to attribute major responsibility to the central government rather than local governments when perceiving the severity of food safety problems, and this tendency becomes stronger for the low-income population. The results deepen the understanding of the local-central political trust patterns and the political implications of food safety problems in China.

Survey results inflate political trust in China if the observed trust in the central government is mistaken for the latent trust in the Centre. The target of trust in the country is the Centre, which is ultimately the top leader. The critical issue domain for assessing the Centre's trustworthiness is policy implementation rather than policymaking. The Centre's trustworthiness has two dimensions: commitment to good governance and the capacity to discipline local officials. Observed trust in the central government indicates trust in the Centre's commitment, while observed trust in the local government reflects confidence in the Centre's capacity. A machine learning analysis of a national survey reveals how much conventional reading overestimates political trust. At first glance, 85 per cent of the respondents trust the central government. Upon further inspection, 18 per cent have total trust in the Centre, 34 per cent have partial trust and 33 per cent are sceptical.