Welcome from the Project Director

This ambitious international research project is directed and coordinated by the Austrian Institute for Comparative Survey Research (ICSR), which is also hosting the International Secretariat of the World Values Survey Association (WVSA) on the one hand and Eurasia Barometer (EAB) on the other. The Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator is Professor Christian W. Haerpfer from the University of Vienna (Austria), the Co-Principal Investigator is Professor Pippa Norris from Harvard University (USA). The Project Manager is Dr Kseniya Kizilova. TRUEDEM is an international and interdisciplinary research project with top scholars from the academic disciplines of Political Science, Sociology, Political Sociology, Economic Sociology, Public Policy, Law, Science of Mass Communication and Media, and Psychology.

Political trust has long been regarded as an important element of regime support and factor of regime stability; it is widely associated with a number of positive outcomes in representative democracies. Political trust drives citizens’ interest and engagement in politics, increases voting turnout and makes law-abiding behavior more common. Political trust is frequently equated to diffuse regime support and thus linked to the effective functioning and stability of the political system. The proposed research effort will monitor the structural (long-term) drivers of political trust but also emphasize the strategies which can be employed by diverse actors and agencies to strengthen accurate and informed judgments of agency trustworthiness.

The objective of this ambitious project is twofold. First, we aim to design and implement a complex research effort to collect comprehensive evidence on the judgments of trustworthiness in a range of European states. Second, the project will develop a comprehensive and transparent toolbox of short-term and long-term policy interventions including recommendations, and methodologies for enhancing trust in political institutions, boosting transparency, and inclusiveness of representative systems in Europe. While there is a growing concern about the crisis of democracy and democratic backsliding, this research effort will provide an innovative theoretical perspective on the sources of regime support and strategies for trust building in the public domain.

The project looks at the different drivers of 'positive high trust in democracy' and 'negative high trust in autocracy'. The project will facilitate the development of a new paradigm of political trust and trust-building and will inspire the emergence of new insights on the multi-facet origins of political trust and multi-factor nature of trustworthiness.

In my capacity as the Director of this new exciting and important project, I invite you to get engaged with the Project team in any suitable for your way: follow us on social media, join us for conferences and webinars or reach out to plan join publications. The TRUEDEM Consortium is very much looking forward to establishing new partnerships and joining efforts with other scholars in this field to advance the Political Sciences research on public trust.

Sincerely,

Professor Dr Christian W Haerpfer MSc

Project Director and Principal Investigator of TRUEDEM

President of the World Values Survey Association (WVSA)

Director of the Institute for Comparative Survey Research (ICSR)

Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria