Giulia Dotti Sani (Collegio Carlo Alberto)

“Increasingly unequal. The economic crisis, trust in institutions and social inequalities in six peripheral European countries”

abstract

The 2008-09 economic crisis has been identified as an important element contributing to declining trust in institutions in Europe and other countries. However, it is unclear whether the decline in trust is distributed homogenously among citizens, or whether there are differences between social strata in the extent to which trust in institutions has declined. This article uses six waves of European Social Survey data to analyze the changes in trust in the European parliament and in national parliaments from 2002 to 2012 in the peripheral European countries hit hardest by the economic crisis: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Cyprus, Greece and Spain. Moreover, we investigate whether individuals with different socio-economic backgrounds experienced different reductions in trust. Our results indicate that trust in both institutions has steeply declined from before to after the onset of the economic crisis, a problematic finding considering the importance of trust in institutions for the well functioning of democratic societies. Furthermore, the results indicate that the decline in trust was more pronounced among subjects with lower social status, that is, the unemployed, the lower educated and those with lower income. The tightening of the link between social and political inequalities is especially preoccupying considering the importance of trust in institutions for citizens to actively participate in society, voice their needs and demand their place at the table. Hence, the worsening economic conditions combined with declining levels of trust are not only troublesome for the functioning of democracies as a whole, but they are also problematic at the individual level, as they are likely to perpetuate the divide between subjects at different ends of the social ladder.