BOOK
Trust: How Citizens View Political Institutions, Oxford University Press (2024)
We seem to be living in an age of citizen distrust of social and political elites. Distrust is also seen to have numerous negative consequences for our civic and democratic life. Yet are western democracies really facing a crisis of trust? This book provides an extensive and up-to-date review of one of the most important topics in contemporary political life. It explores the nature and condition of trust today by exploring three key issues. What do we mean by trust? How far are levels of trust in decline? How damaging are the consequences of low trust for effective democratic governance? The book also considers how trust arises, and which factors might explain the declines in trust witnessed recently in many countries. Providing evidence from many countries, Trust: How Citizens View Political Institutions pays particular attention to Britain, which has seen a marked decline in public regard for political elites, making the country a vital case for identifying the causes and effects of low trust. Combining conceptual and empirical analysis, the book provides a timely analysis of a central issue in contemporary political debate.
Blogpost drawing on book's findings.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
'What is trust in science (and scientists), and is it in crisis?'
Current Opinion in Psychology, 67 (2026) (access paper)
Public trust in science and scientists contributes to important social beliefs and behaviours. Yet it is sometimes believed to be in crisis. This article reviews what trust consists of and how it is typically measured. Drawing on national and international survey data, it shows there is little evidence of a public crisis of trust. While there is evidence of a polarisation of trust in certain countries, this picture does not apply more widely. Nonetheless, initiatives to maintain public trust are important; but these should focus on scientists’ wider social position and roles rather than simply emphasising their competence. If there is a problem, it lies in the limited influence of scientific messages rather than in public distrust of scientists.
'Trust the messenger': Public trust in sources of information on COVID-19
Ben Seyd, Joseph A Hamm, Will Jennings, Lawrence McKay and Meridith Anness
Parliamentary Affairs, 78:2, 2025 (access paper; data)
A key lesson of the coronavirus pandemic was the importance for pro-social behaviour of popular trust in key information sources. Yet existing studies rarely consider the role of people’s trust in a range of different information sources, and the relationship between such trust and particular attitudes and behaviours among individuals. This study goes beyond the general mantra that ‘trust matters’ and explores more specific effects, relating to trust in particular actors and for particular outcomes. Based on a survey fielded on a representative sample of the British population conducted towards the end of the pandemic, we find evidence that people’s coronavirus attitudes and behaviours are particularly related to their trust in scientific experts and, in some cases, to their trust in local councils. However, trust in these actors is not uniformly associated with people’s coronavirus beliefs and actions. This suggests that the link between people’s trust and their pro-social attitudes and behaviours is often specific rather than general. The results hold important implications for the design of effective public communication strategies in the event of any future health emergency.
‘Follow the Science’: Popular Trust in Scientific Experts During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Ben Seyd, Joseph A Hamm, Will Jennings, Lawrence McKay, Viktor Valgarðsson and Meredith Anness
Public Understanding of Science, 34:1, 2025 (paper; data)
The coronavirus pandemic increased the role played by scientific advisers in counselling governments and citizens on issues around public health. This raises questions about how citizens evaluate scientists, and in particular the grounds on which they trust them. Previous studies have identified various factors associated with trust in scientists, although few have systematically explored a range of judgements and their relative effects. This study takes advantage of scientific advisers’ heightened public profile during the pandemic to explore how people’s trust in scientists is shaped by perceptions about their features and traits, along with evaluations of their behaviour and role within the decision-making process. The study also considers people’s trust in politicians, thereby identifying whether trust in scientists reflects similar or distinctive considerations to trust in partisan actors. Data are derived from specially-designed conjoint experiments and surveys of nationally representative samples in Britain and the US.
Political Legitimacy in Western Europe: Comparing People's Expectations and Evaluations of Democracy
Ben Seyd
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 33:1, 2023 (link to journal; paper)
Democratic legitimacy is sometimes measured by comparing what individuals expect of democracy with their evaluations of democratic performance. However, such composite measures hinder our understanding of whether any factors found to shape legitimacy do so through effects on expectations, through effects on evaluations or through effects on both. This article considers people’s democratic expectations and evaluations separately. By modelling each – along with their combination in a measure of legitimacy – it identifies the factors that shape each outcome, and in particular whether any effects on legitimacy run through what people expect of democracy or through how they evaluate democratic performance. Models are run for four different dimensions of democracy to test whether the factors shaping people’s attitudes vary between different aspects of the democratic system. The analysis is conducted using Wave 6 of the European Social Survey (2012-13) on populations across 16 west European countries. Analysis of individual country populations also enables us to identify whether the causes and mechanisms of democratic legitimacy vary between different national contexts.
Results of the individual country regression models are here.
Perceived Risk Crowds out Trust? Trust and Public Compliance with Coronavirus Restrictions over the Course of the Pandemic
Ben Seyd and Feifei Bu
European Political Science Review, 14: 2, 2022 (link to article; blogpost)
Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may ‘crowd out’ the role of trust. We hypothesise that, at the pandemic’s outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Decision Responsiveness and the Legitimacy of Public Agencies
Ben Seyd, Alexandra Cichocka and Orestis Panayiotou
Parliamentary Affairs, 75:2, 2022 (link to article; details of the survey)
The procedural qualities of decisions made by public agencies are known to shape citizens’ perceptions of decision legitimacy. Existing empirical studies focus on procedures such as whether citizens are consulted, and whether their preferences are taken into account. Less is known about whether decisions made by public agencies are deemed legitimate if they reflect citizens’ broad interests rather than their immediate preferences. Yet many contemporary issues confront policy makers with dilemmas of whether to respond to citizens’ demands or instead to act on their interests. Using an experimental approach among a sample of British citizens, we analyse the effects on perceived legitimacy of various aspects of decision responsiveness. We focus in particular on whether public agencies are rewarded if they ignore citizens’ preferences while showing they are acting in their broader interests. Our results show that perceived legitimacy is indeed higher when decisions are seen to reflect citizens’ collective interests. But this boost disappears if individuals disapprove of the agency’s decision. We conclude that acting in citizens’ broad interests is unlikely to stimulate legitimacy among individuals who do not favour a decision’s outcome.
BOOK CHAPTERS
'Inside the "Black box": Understanding the Micro-Foundations of Political Trust', in Daniel Devine and Malcolm Fairbrother, eds, A Research Agenda for Political Trust (Edward Elgar), 2026.
This chapter identifies the need for more analysis of how people form trust judgements; the study of trust as a process (or verb) rather than just as an outcome (or noun). It outlines a general framework for thinking about trust judgements. One route to trust is ‘calculative’, based on deliberative processing of information about the actions and performance of an object. A second, and opposite, route is ‘heuristic’, based on information-poor, but easy to process, qualities and features of an object (such as generalised images and stereotypes). The nature of these two routes is outlined, along with the conditions in which each route is likely to be taken. There are considerable payoffs of a greater focus on trust's ‘micro-foundations’, notably in aiding our understanding of the dynamics of trust and of trust's wider effects. Various ways of extending the research agenda to achieve these goals are identified.