Understanding the relationship between political trust and populism. Evidence from 26 European countries, 2020-2022

Abstract

A comparative analysis of 26 European democracies between 2020 and 2022 examines how populist ideology and institutional trust interact under varying conditions of political power. Drawing on Cass Mudde’s thin-centred definition of populism and Pippa Norris’s multidimensional model of political trust, the work disaggregates two pathways: one in which low trust precedes populist support, and another in which populist success reshapes citizens’ confidence in state institutions. Harmonised data from the European Social Survey, PopuList, and ParlGov are used to construct an index of trust in parliament, the judiciary, and political parties, alongside a binary indicator of populist voting and measures of cabinet participation and parliamentary seat share. Fixed-effects OLS regressions with clustered standard errors and controls for demographic and socioeconomic covariates reveal a “power-contingent trust cycle.” In countries where populists remain in opposition, supporters exhibit significantly lower trust (over one point on a 0–10 scale), whereas in those where populists govern, support is associated with a modest trust boost. Seat-share magnitude exerts no consistent additional effect. These findings underscore that populism’s impact on democratic legitimacy is highly context-dependent: exclusion amplifies scepticism, while inclusion can restore or even elevate confidence among its electorate.