Webinar in April 2025

Who Cares? Issue Salience as a Key Explanation for Heterogeneity in Citizens’ Approaches to Political Trust (April 07, 2025)

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.  [Read full article text].

Lisanne de Blok is an Assistant Professor at the Utrecht University School of Governance and the Managing Director of Research & Communication at the Netherlands Institute of Governance (NIG). She has previously held positions at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam. Additionally, she has been a visiting scholar at the Quality of Government Institute in Gothenburg, the University of Oslo, and Bocconi University in Milan. Her research focuses on the policy-feedback relationship between policy performance and political support in multilevel governance systems, addressing key issues such as democratic legitimacy, welfare state performance and uncertainty. In her recent work, she examines the role of political trust in shaping long-term climate preferences. Lisanne actively contributes to public debates through invited guest talks, newspaper articles, blogs, and public reports.