Trust shifting as a reaction to pandemic: Cross country analysis

Journal title RIVISTA DI STUDI SULLA SOSTENIBILITA'
Author/s Tamara Merkulova, Kateryna Kononova
Publishing Year 2021 Issue 2020/2 Language English
Pages 23 P. 11-33 File size 251 KB
DOI 10.3280/RISS2020-002002
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Governance systems all over the world are coming under huge stress. Nowadays, two factors become crucial in the fight against the pandemic and its negative consequences: the state’s ability to withstand stress in the economy and society; and civil support and approval of the governments’ anti-crisis actions. This study aims to recognize the difference in stress response in different countries of the world. As a criterion for such a response, we consider the level of trust to governments in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Fragile States Index was used as a measure of the state fragility, and the indices of trust were used as indicators of the people’s reaction. The study showed that there is no correlation between 1) the trust in the government and the fragility of the state; 2) the support for government actions during the pandemic and the trust to the government before the pandemic. The clustering of countries by the set of indices of trust and fragility showed that the clusters’ means support both the assumptions of a direct and an inverse relationship between trust and state resistance to stress. In response to quarantine measures, we see multidirectional trends in both stable and fragile states: trust can grow, fall, or remain unchanged. However, in stronger states, the tendency to an increase in trust is stronger, while in weaker states - to its fall, which confirms the thesis that in crisis the weak weakens and the strong strengthens. The results of the analyses provide arguments in favor of the following. The stability of the state does not guarantee the high trust of citizens and support for its actions during a crisis, and high trust is not a stable factor of high support for government actions. At the same time, it can be expected that the positive reaction of citizens to government measures (increased trust) will be more significant than disappointment (loss of trust).

Keywords: Pandemic, state fragility, trust in the government, stress response

  1. Bjørnskov C. (2017). Social Trust and Economic Growth. Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust. -- Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2906280.
  2. Fragile States Index (2020). -- Retrieved from ttps://fragilestatesindex.org/excel/.
  3. Fukuyama F. (2020). The Thing that Determines a Country’s Resistance to the Coronavirus. -- Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/thing-determines-how-well-countries-respond-coronavirus/609025/.
  4. Gallup International. (2020). The coronavirus: a vast scared majority around the world. Snap poll in 28 Countries by Gallup International Association. – Retrieved from https://www.gallup-international.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/GIA_SnapPoll_2020_COVID_Tables_final.pdf.
  5. Gallup International (2020, April). Second Wave of Global Polling. Around the Globe: Worries about the Disease and Poverty. Support for the Authorities. Same in Bulgaria with some Important Specifics. -- Retrieved from https://www.gallup-international.bg/en/43197/second-wave-of-global-polling-around-theglobe-worries-about-the-disease-and-poverty-support-for-the-authorities-samein-bulgaria-with-some-important-specifics/.
  6. Gallup International (2020, June). The Opinion Across the Globe is Equally Dividedon Whether Life will Return to Normal in 2021. -- Retrieved from https://www.gallup-international.bg/en/43772/the-opinion-across-the-globe-isequaly-devided-on-returning-to-normal-life.
  7. Green D. (2020). Covid-19 as a Critical Juncture. Global Policy. -- Retrieved from https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Green%20-%20Covid-19%20as%20a%20Critical%20Juncture%20and%20the%20Implications%20for%20Advocacy0.pdf.
  8. Guangyi X. (2017). Trust and Economic Performance: A Panel Study. Munich Personal RePEc Archive. -- Retrieved from https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/80815/1/MPRA_paper_80815.pdf.
  9. Merkulova T., Bitkova T. (2016). Trust measurement: comparative analysis of experimental and sociological methods. Good Connections. Trust, cooperation and education in the mirror of social sciences. Rocznik Lubuski, Tom 42, część 2a.Zielona Góra. – p. 23-33.
  10. OECD (2020). COVID-19, Crises, and Fragility. -- Retrieved from https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=131_131938-b9ys3suiav&title=COVID-19-Crises-and-Fragility.
  11. Ortiz-Ospina E., Roser M. (2020). Trust. Our World in Data. -- Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/trust.
  12. Pinker S. (2012). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin Books, 832 p.
  13. States of Fragility (2016). States of Fragility report. OECD. -- Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dac/conflict-fragility-resilience/listofstateoffragilityreports.htm.
  14. States of Fragility (2018). Fragility framework. OECD. -- Retrieved from http://www3.compareyourcountry.org/states-of-fragility/overview/0/.
  15. Wellcome Global Monitor (2018). -- Retrieved from https://wellcome.ac.uk/reports/wellcome-global-monitor/2018.
  16. World Bank (2020). Global Economic Prospects. The World Bank Group. – Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economicprospects.
  17. World Values Survey (2020). Wave 7. Study # WVS-2017v20200720. – Retrieved from http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp.

  • TRUST AND EFFICIENCY OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR: THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF INTERRELATION in Bulletin of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University Economic Series /2021
    DOI: 10.26565/2311-2379-2021-100-03

Tamara Merkulova, Kateryna Kononova, Trust shifting as a reaction to pandemic: Cross country analysis in "RIVISTA DI STUDI SULLA SOSTENIBILITA'" 2/2020, pp 11-33, DOI: 10.3280/RISS2020-002002