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The role of political trust in conditioning perceptions of corruption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2012

Andrew Wroe ,
Nicholas Allen  and
Sarah Birch
Andrew Wroe*
Affiliation:
School of Politics and IR, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
Nicholas Allen
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and IR, Royal Holloway, University of London, Surrey, UK
Sarah Birch
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Essex, Essex, UK
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Political trust and corruption have both elicited considerable academic and popular commentary in recent years. Much attention has been focused on the extent to which corruption has contributed to citizens’ increasing distrust of their politicians. But little attention has been paid to the possibility that distrust may condition responses to alleged corruption, and no work has hitherto demonstrated the veracity of this relationship in a mature democracy. Drawing on data from the United Kingdom, this paper finds that less trusting individuals are consistently more censorious of politicians’ misbehaviour and more likely to perceive the presence of corruption than are their more trusting peers. The paper further demonstrates that people who are less trusting become relatively more critical (compared with the more trusting) as the generally perceived corruptness of a certain scenario declines. It also demonstrates how trust increases in importance as a predictor of ethical judgements when behaviour is generally reckoned to be less corrupt. Further analysis suggests that this effect is partly connected to uncertainty. Less obviously corrupt acts are associated with higher levels of uncertainty, which appears to open up a space for trust to play an even more significant role in shaping individual's judgements of politicians’ behaviour.

Keywords

trustcorruptionscandaluncertaintyendogeneity
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2013 , pp. 175 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © European Consortium for Political Research 2012 

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