scholarly journals EXPRESS: Local Impact of Global Crises, Institutional Trust, and Consumer Well-being: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1069031X2110226
Author(s):  
Vasileios Davvetas ◽  
Aulona Ulqinaku ◽  
Gülen Sarial Abi
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Global Crisis ◽  
Trust Formation ◽  
Local Impact ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
The Impact

Global crises become increasingly more frequent and consequential. Yet, the impact of these crises is unevenly distributed across countries, leading to discrepancies in (inter)national crisis-regulating institutions’ ability to uphold public trust and safeguard their constituents’ well-being. Employing the paradigm of citizens as customers of political institutions, drawing on attribution and socio-political trust theories, and using the COVID-19 pandemic as empirical context, we investigate how consumers’ relative perceptions of local impact following a global crisis affect the psychological processes of institutional trust-formation and consumer well-being. Conducting one survey-based study in two countries affected disproportionately by the pandemic’s first wave (USA, Greece) and one experimental study in a third country (Italy) during the pandemic’s second wave, we find that institutional trust declines more in countries whose citizens hold perceptions of higher relative local impact following a global crisis; institutional blame attributions explain trust erosion; institutional distrust decreases consumer well-being and adherence to institutional guidelines; consumers’ globalization attitudes immunize international institutions from blame and distrust; and political conservatives transfer blame and distrust from national to international institutions amidst global crises. The findings enrich institutional branding and trust literatures and have implications for stakeholders involved in global crisis-management (policymakers, political marketers, institutional brand managers).

Is religion the ‘opiate of the masses’? Religion and political trust in China

2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212110485
Author(s):  
Yida Zhai
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
National Income ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Perceived Fairness ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The Impact

The past few decades have witnessed a radical religious revival in China, where economic inequality has been sharply increasing as well. This study examines the impact of religion on the Chinese public’s perceptions of income disparity and political trust. The findings show that there is a significant difference in the perceived fairness of personal income distribution between religious and non-religious people. As the opiate thesis on religion predicts, religious beliefs are positively associated with a high level of perceived fairness about personal and national income distribution. Such perceptions of fairness contribute to fostering citizens’ trust in both political institutions and government officials. However, contrary to the opiate thesis, religious beliefs are negatively associated with institutional trust. Moreover, religious beliefs offset the positive effect of the perceived fairness of income distribution on institutional trust. Hence, when income distribution is perceived to be unfair, institutional trust declines more drastically among religious believers than among their non-religious counterparts.

Institutional Favoritism, Income, and Political Trust: Evidence from Jordan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ammar Shamaileh ◽  
Yousra Chaábane
Keyword(s):  
Negative Correlation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Well Being ◽  
National Origin ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regression Analyses ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Economic Well Being

What is the relationship between institutional favoritism, economic well-being, and political trust? Due to the role that East Bank tribes played in supporting the monarchy during the state’s formative years, Jordan has institutionalized a type of political discrimination that privileges East Bank Jordanians over Palestinian Jordanians. An empirical examination of the political institutions of the state reveals that such discrimination remains pervasive. It was subsequently theorized that institutional favoritism’s impact on political trust is conditional on income due to the greater salience of group identity among individuals with lower incomes. Regression analyses of survey data reveal a consistent negative correlation between political trust and income among East Bank Jordanians. There is little evidence of a substantively meaningful unconditional relationship between national origin and political trust.

Institutions and the Global Political Economy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa L. Martin
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

In a comparison of today’s global political economy with that of the last great era of globalization, the late nineteenth century, the most prominent distinction is be the high degree of institutionalization in today’s system. While the nineteenth-century system did have some important international institutions—in particular the gold standard and an emerging network of trade agreements—it had nothing like the scope and depth of today’s powerful international economic institutions. We cannot understand the functioning of today’s global political economy without understanding the sources and consequences of these institutions. Why were international organizations (IOs) such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or International Monetary Fund (IMF) created? How have they gained so much influence? What difference do they make for the functioning of the global economy and the well-being of individuals around the world? In large part, understanding IOs requires a focus on the tension between the use of power, and rules that are intended to constrain the use of power. IOs are rules-based creatures. They create and embody rules for gaining membership, for how members should behave, for monitoring, for punishment if members renege on their commitments, etc. However, these rules-based bodies exist in the anarchical international system, in which there is no authority above states, and states continue to exercise power when it is in their self-interest to do so. While states create and join IOs in order to make behavior more rule-bound and predictable, the rules themselves reflect the global distribution of power at the time of their creation; and they only constrain to the extent that states find that the benefits of constraint exceed the costs of the loss of autonomy. The tension between rules and power shapes the ways in which international institutions function, and therefore the impact that they have on the global economy. For all their faults, international economic institutions have proven themselves to be an indispensable part of the modern global political economy, and their study represents an especially vibrant research agenda.

The Link Between a Husband’s Trust in Informal Institutions and Domestic Violence Against His Wife: Evidence From Pakistan

2020 ◽  
pp. 088626052097030
Author(s):  
Sonia Akter
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Informal Institutions ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
The Impact

The global and national push to strengthen informal institutions’ role in increasing rural households’ access to justice has often met with skepticism in South Asia. This is because the impact of such initiatives on women’s welfare is debatable in many contexts due to reports of informal institutions’ hostile and oppressive behavior toward women. This study contributes to this debate by presenting the first empirical evidence of gender difference in trust in informal village institutions. The study also tests the relationship between a husband’s trust in informal institutions and his tendency to commit physical violence against his wife. It uses the Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey datasets of more than 2,000 households from three provinces (Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) of Pakistan. Trust in local political institutions is measured by (a) respondent’s reliance on village institutions for handling general community affairs and maintaining law and order and (b) respondent’s perceptions of local government’s effectiveness in dispute settlement and ensuring public security. Men’s and women’s trust in informal village institutions and their perceptions of these institutions’ legitimacy do not significantly differ in most cases. Women exhibit a greater trust and confidence in informal institutions that hold regular resident meetings than in those that do not. The results also reveal a significant negative relationship between a husband’s trust in informal institutions and the incidence of physical violence against his wife. Greater trust in informal institutions has a significant positive correlation with a husband’s psychological well-being, his relationship with family, and his perceptions of institutional legitimacy. The findings imply that well-performing informal institutions work as an indirect deterrent for domestic violence in the study areas of Pakistan.

scholarly journals Support for insider parties: The role of political trust in a longitudinal-comparative perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882097692
Author(s):  
Constanza Sanhueza Petrarca ◽  
Heiko Giebler ◽  
Bernhard Weßels
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Window Of Opportunity ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Electoral Performance

European democracies have experienced drastic changes in electoral competition. Voter support for insider parties that have traditionally governed has declined while support for radical and populist parties has increased. Simultaneously, citizens’ declining political trust has become a concern, as confidence in political institutions and actors is low across numerous countries. Interestingly, the linkage between political trust and support for insider parties has not been empirically established but deduced from the fact that outsider parties are often supported by dissatisfied citizens. We address this gap adopting both an institutional- and an actor-centered approach by investigating whether trust in parliaments and in parties is associated with the electoral performance of insider parties on the aggregate level. Combining different data sources in a novel way, we apply time-series cross-section models to a dataset containing 30 countries and 137 elections from 1998 to 2018. Our results show that when political trust is low, particularly institutional trust, insider parties receive less electoral support. Hence, we provide empirical evidence that decreasing levels of political trust are the downfall of insider parties, thereby opening a window of opportunity for challenging outsider parties.

scholarly journals Mediated trust: A theoretical framework to address the trustworthiness of technological trust mediators

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482093992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balázs Bodó
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Institutional Logics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Trust Formation ◽  
The Impact

This article considers the impact of digital technologies on the interpersonal and institutional logics of trust production. It introduces the new theoretical concept of technology-mediated trust to analyze the role of complex techno-social assemblages in trust production and distrust management. The first part of the article argues that globalization and digitalization have unleashed a crisis of trust, as traditional institutional and interpersonal logics are not attuned to deal with the risks introduced by the prevalence of digital technologies. In the second part, the article describes how digital intermediation has transformed the traditional logics of interpersonal and institutional trust formation and created new trust-mediating services. Finally, the article asks as follows: why should we trust these technological trust mediators? The conclusion is that at best, it is impossible to establish the trustworthiness of trust mediators, and that at worst, we have no reason to trust them.

scholarly journals Learning by doing: The impact of experiencing democracy in education on political trust and participation

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572199028
Author(s):  
Johannes Kiess
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Learning By Doing ◽  
Socialization Theory ◽  
Student Council ◽  
Democracy In Education ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Online Panels ◽  
The Impact

This article investigates whether engagement in school or university, such as being the speaker of class, a member of a student council, and so on, has an impact on political participation and political trust. Following interactionist socialization theory, engagement during adolescence should develop ideas of citizenship, democracy, and political participation. Schools and universities are arguably key institutions as they can promote democratic decision making in the classroom. This strengthens democracy by increasing experienced political efficacy and through internalizing democratic principles (‘learning democracy’): by acting democratic, one becomes a democratic citizen. My findings show that respondents who experienced democracy in school or university indeed tend to vote and engage even in contentious forms of political participation more often. Also, the experience of democratic practices in school and university increases trust in political institutions. Moreover, trust in political institutions, in turn, increases the likelihood of voting, but not of engaging in other forms of participation. Thus, early democratic experiences seem to foster vivid and participatory democracy without streamlining people into passive participation. The article provides empirical evidence from nine European countries and an additional glance at young cohorts based on online panels.

The Impact of International Institutions on Bilateral Trade: Economic and Political

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1850149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myeong Hwan Kim ◽  
Dongsoo Kim ◽  
Yongseung Han
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Bilateral Trade ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Moderate Increase ◽  
Multilateral Trade ◽  
Military Alliance ◽  
The Impact

This study aims to contribute to drawing a more complete picture of the role of multilateral economic and political institutions. Particularly, we pursue answers to questions such as how much influence participation in multilateral trade arrangements and military alliance has on bilateral trade of the states involved. Our results show that political institutions, set apart from trade issues, do affect bilateral trade--even though these effects are demonstrably smaller than those that occur within economic institutions. Military disputes between two states are sure to decrease bilateral trade, while joint democracy and policy similarity between two states, although moderate, increase bilateral trade, but military alliance is indeterminate.

scholarly journals Institutional support for building the investment potential of united communities in rural areas

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-156
Author(s):  
P. Yukhumenko ◽  
S. Batazhok S. ◽  
T. Prikhodko ◽  
V. Zubchenko
Keyword(s):  
Open Economy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Investment Policy ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this article is to deepen the theoretical foundations and scientifcally substantiate approaches to the formation in the conditions of open economy of a perfect investment institutional environment of rural areas. The article has used systematic and evolutionary approaches requiring a hierarchy of essential understanding of a perfect institutional environment and provide a whole research with an identifcation of various characteristics, direct and feedback relationships and dependencies that arise in the implementation of rural investment policy in Ukraine. The essence of the study is to determine the impact of the level of institutional environment perfection of investment attractiveness of rural areas in Ukraine. The practical content has been determined by the fact that theoretical and methodological bases, conclusions, scientifc and practical recommendations form the scientifc basis for the development of a new and a whole concept of national investment policy development at the regional level in Ukraine, taking into account the integration and world economic globalization processes. It has been substantiated that the institutional component is an important component of investment attractiveness for rural areas except an economic one. Research has proved that the formation of a perfect investment institutional environment changes the basic principles of economic interactions, makes them equally attainable for all participants of investment projects, gives the opportunity to reconcile the interests of the entities of the formal and informal sectors and provide them with motivational incentives for innovation-oriented and environmentally responsible country. It has been concluded that the ability of a perfect institutional investment environment to direct an investment potential to the improving of well-being, innovations and investing in people requires the state to determine these tasks as critical of economic growth of rural areas in order to increase the inhabitants’ wealth. It has been substantiated than investment regional policy should be organically integrated in a new institutional environment with inclusive economic and political institutions and should be an accountable and transparent one in governance system. Key words: investments, institutes, institutional environment, region, investment resources, direct investments, entrepreneurship, investment policy.

Evaluation of an Active Citizenship Intervention Based on Youth-Led Participatory Action Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 894-904
Author(s):  
Gabriele Prati ◽  
Davide Mazzoni ◽  
Antonella Guarino ◽  
Cinzia Albanesi ◽  
Elvira Cicognani
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Intervention Group ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Institutional Trust ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Political Alienation ◽  
The Impact

Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) is a theoretical–methodological approach that has been designed to promote positive development (e.g., well-being and health, social–emotional and cognitive development, academic or career advancement) and civic engagement among young people. Although YPAR holds particular promise, there has been little systematic assessment of its effects. Moreover, no study has investigated the role of YPAR in the promotion of active citizenship. We report on an effectiveness evaluation of a YPAR project designed to promote European active citizenship (i.e., identification and attitudes toward a political entity, institutional trust, participation, and political alienation) and social well-being among adolescents. Our sample included 69 Italian high school students (35 in the intervention group; 34 in the control group). We evaluated the impact of YPAR using a pretest–posttest control group design and fitting the generalized estimating equations procedure. The results showed that participants in the intervention group reported increased scores on social well-being, institutional trust, and participation and decreased scores on political alienation compared with the control group. We found no significant effects for identification as European and attitudes toward a political entity. Findings support the benefits of YPAR in terms of social well-being and active citizenship.

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