Can Political Trust Help to Explain Elite Policy Support and Public Behaviour in Times of Crisis? Evidence from the United Kingdom at the Height of the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic
| Author | James Weinberg |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720980900 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720980900
Political Studies
2022, Vol. 70(3) 655 –679
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720980900
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Can Political Trust Help to
Explain Elite Policy Support
and Public Behaviour in Times
of Crisis? Evidence from the
United Kingdom at the Height
of the 2020 Coronavirus
Pandemic
James Weinberg
Abstract
Trust between representatives and citizens is regarded as central to effective governance in times
of peace and uncertainty. This article tests that assumption by engaging elite and mass perspectives
to provide a 360-degree appraisal of vertical and horizontal policy coordination in a crisis scenario.
Specifically, a multi-dimensional conception of political trust, anchored in psychological studies of
interpersonal relations, is operationalised in the context of the United Kingdom’s response to the
2020 coronavirus pandemic. Detailed analysis of data collected from 1045 members of the public
and more than 250 elected politicians suggests that particular facets of political trust and distrust
may have contributed to levels of mass behavioural compliance and elite policy support in the
UK at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. These findings help to evaluate policy success during a
unique and challenging moment while contributing theoretically and methodologically to broader
studies of political trust and governance.
Keywords
trust, coronavirus, crisis, governance, policy
Accepted: 19 November 2020
Rapid response research about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respira-
tory syndrome coronavirus 2), which causes the respiratory disease otherwise known as
COVID-19, emphasised the importance of mass behavioural change to reduce contagion
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Corresponding author:
James Weinberg, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, Elmfield Building,
Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
Email: james.weinberg@sheffield.ac.uk
980900PSX0010.1177/0032321720980900Political StudiesWeinberg
research-article2020
Article
656 Political Studies 70(3)
(see Anderson et al., 2020). Yet while national governments implemented a range of
social and economic ‘lockdowns’, albeit at different paces, early reports suggested vary-
ing degrees of public support and adherence (e.g. Connolly et al., 2020; Tominey et al.,
2020). In this context, the importance of the social and behavioural sciences, including
psycho-social concepts such as trust, quickly gained traction in both academic and prac-
titioner debates about the pandemic response (Van Bavel et al., 2020). As Devine et al.
(2020: 2) posited in their review of emerging research, ‘Trust between governors and the
governed could be seen as essential to facilitating good governance of the pandemic’. As
countries around the world grapple with second or third waves of the virus and contem-
plate new tranches of long-term legal restrictions on people’s behaviour, this article draws
on original data collected at the first peak of the virus to understand the role of political
trust as an antecedent of mass behavioural compliance with, and elite support for, crisis-
related public policy decisions.
To the extent that political leaders were quickly made aware of epidemiological
measures such as social distancing, contact tracing and mass testing that could counter
the virus’s urgent threat, the COVID-19 crisis was somewhat of a ‘known unknown’ in
the words of former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Yet whether or not
existing intelligence was successfully deployed relied on confident relations between
political leaders and those they govern. From this perspective, political trust – under-
stood in sum as the willingness of citizens to make themselves vulnerable to political
actors and institutions – can be seen as a key psychological lubricant for governing
effectively in such times of uncertainty. In democratic polities especially, the official
response to COVID-19 was shaped by (a) political leaders who were tasked with deliv-
ering public health announcements (and thus became the public-facing interlocutors of
public health guidelines), (b) parliaments and legislatures who were tasked with granting
emergency powers to sitting governments or passing legislation related to the crisis
response and (c) democratically elected officials who had to take the difficult decisions,
in line with scientific evidence or not, about implementing fast-paced changes to social,
cultural and economic life.
Crises like COVID-19 do, then, place an added premium on the ‘social contract’
underpinning principal–agent relations in democracies, which relies fundamentally on
conditional trust judgements by those without power in those with decision-making
authority to act in their better interests. The importance of political trust is thus twofold
during crises such as COVID-19. At one level, a climate of declining political trust (or
rising distrust in the political) might reduce public compliance with political mandates
and/or delimit politicians’ policy toolkit by structuring the viability of legitimate govern-
ance and policy making (for similar arguments, see ‘t Hart, 2011: 324–326). At another
level, political trust between politicians might facilitate an effective crisis response by
pushing actors towards enhanced cooperation, while distrust may hinder it by catalysing
strategic action, anticipated reactions and partisan politicking.
Early studies of the COVID-19 crisis provide supporting evidence for the claim that
higher levels of political trust precipitated public compliance (Goldstein and Wiedemann,
2020; Oksanen et al., 2020; Olsen and Hjorth, 2020). These studies are limited, however,
by measurement issues that leave the underlying causal mechanisms of this relationship
rather opaque. For example, ‘compliance’ has been measured in the US using mobility
data (Goldstein and Wiedemann, 2020) and in Denmark using self-reported social dis-
tancing (Olsen and Hjorth, 2020), and related conclusions have even been drawn in com-
parative studies using COVID-19 mortality rates (Oksanen et al., 2020). Similarly, trust
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