Who Cares? Issue Salience as a Key Explanation for Heterogeneity in Citizens’ Approaches to Political Trust

Abstract

Political trust is a critical facet of the democratic legitimacy of political institutions. A vast body of research convincingly demonstrates that political trust is responsive to actual political performance, where citizens trust their government if it performs well and vice versa. However, if political trust is based on citizens’ evaluations of government performance, this raises the question what type of performance citizens take into consideration. This research note demonstrates that citizens’ bases of political trust vary as they emphasize different policy issues, and that perceived issue salience can explain this variation. Using a combination of longitudinal cross-sectional data from EU member states and novel multi-level Dutch data, it models both collective and personal issue salience as key conditions for performance-based political trust. In doing so, this research note generates new insights into the formation of political trust.