Repositioning research on migrant political attitudes: the role of host government performance in the erosion of migrant political trust
Briitta Mohney
Master Program International Migration and Social Cohesion (MISOCO) Matrikel-Nr. 965782
May 2016
Professor Dr. Wassilis Kassis University of Osnabrück
Associate Professor Dr. Tom Van der Meer University of Amsterdam
Professor Dr. Edurne Bartolomé Peral University of Deusto
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ... 5
2. Conceptual Framework ... 8
2.1 Political support, political trust and the Miller-Citrin debate ... 8
2.2 Conceptualization of political trust ... 13
a. Definitions and origins ... 13
b. Heightened expectations ... 15
i. Cultural theories: origins of political trust ... 15
ii. Cultural theories: changes in political trust ... 21
c. Declining evaluations ... 24
i. Institutional theory: origins of political trust ... 24
ii. Institutional theory: changes in political trust ... 26
d. Heightened expectations or declining evaluations? ... 32
2.3 Importance of political trust for democracy ... 33
2.4 A note on citizenship and political trust ... 35
3. Declining migrant political trust in Europe... 38
3.1 Attitudinal acculturation: heightened expectations ... 39
3.2 Frame of reference: adjusted expectations ... 41
3.3 Barriers to integration: evaluations based on individual circumstances ... 43
3.4 Evidence on MPT in the United States and Canada ... 45
3.5. MPT and host government migration policies ... 47
4. MPT and migration governance ... 49
4.1 Migration policies ... 50
4.3 Interaction effect: Time ... 54
4.3 Interaction effect: Discrimination ... 55
5. Data and methodology ... 56
5.1 Dataset and variables ... 56
b. Dependent variable: trust in national parliament ... 59
c. Country-level independent variables ... 59
i. Migration policy ... 59
ii. Corruption ... 62
d. Individual-level independent variables ... 63
5.2 Analytical approach ... 65
5.3 Results ... 65
a. Model 1: General model of political trust ... 65
b. Model 2a, 2b, & 2c: Migration policies and MPT ... 66
c. Models 3a & 3b: MPT over time ... 71
d. Models 4a & 4b: MPT and discrimination ... 71
6. Discussion and conclusion ... 74
6.1 Remaining questions ... 79
6.2 Conclusion ... 80
Bibliography ... 82
Appendix ... 89
A.1 Variables from the European Social Survey ... 90
A.2 MIPEX Methodology ... 90
A.3 CPI Methodology ... 90
Preface
I entered MISOCO with a few years of experience researching European public opinion towards migration and soon began to wonder about the attitudes of migrants
themselves. After exploring existing cross-national comparative studies on migrant political attitudes, I found myself asking even more questions. I address some of these questions in this study and save others for my future research as a PhD student in the Department of Government at Harvard University, which I begin in the fall.
I thank Dr. Kassis for his attentive supervision, kind and constructive words of
guidance, and regard for my research methods and style.1 I am also grateful to Dr. Van
der Meer for his enthusiastic support of my topic and for sharing his extensive expertise on political trust. I thank Dr. Bartolomé Peral, who first encouraged me to pursue this study after reading my final assignment for her class, and who has since offered advice as I move forward both with this research as well as my academic career. Finally, I want to thank my MISOCO peers and professors for their comments.
1. Introduction
“If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.”
– Barack Obama
Declining political trust across advanced industrial democracies has captured the attention of politicians and scholars alike for decades. Originally, political scientists debated whether trust was even declining, a disagreement spurred in part by the difficulty of accurately measuring political trust (Citrin 1974; Miller 1974). Most scholars have come to agree that if not decreasing, political trust remains at low levels. Debates now focus on why trust remains low and the extent to which low trust poses problems for democracy (Norris 2011; Van der Meer 2016b). These decades of debate have been fruitful, producing a vast literature that explores the origins of political trust and the reasons for which it changes (Klingemann & Fuchs 1995; Norris 1999, 2011; Dalton et al. 2004). Most explanations for the downward trend in trust focus either on the heightened expectations of a Postmodern citizenry, declining evaluations of government performance, or a combination of both (Norris 2011; Newton 2001).
More recently, a handful of studies have observed that migrant political trust [MPT] in Europe declines with residence in the host country (Maxwell 2010, 2013; Adman & Strömblad 2015; Röder & Mühlau 2012). This phenomenon is not unique to Europe as scholars have identified a similar trend among migrants in Canada and the United States (White, Bilodeau & Nivette 2015; Michelson 2003). Yet, despite the vast literature on declining trust across advanced democracies, the decline in MPT has been analyzed from the framework of acculturation. Some scholars argue that the decline in MPT is evidence that migrants gradually adopt the Postmaterial expectations of their native-born peers (Maxwell 2010; 2013), while others claim that declining MPT reflects the challenges and discrimination that migrants may face as they integrate (Adman &
Strömblad 2015). Explaining MPT through the limited framework of acculturation processes has resulted in insufficient attention paid to the possibility that migrants’ evaluations of host government performance may be declining as they spend more time in the host country.
If declining political trust among citizens across advanced democracies is
puzzling and concerning enough to spark extensive scholarship, why have these theories and findings been largely absent from research on a similar phenomenon among
migrants in Europe? Does trust in the political system among foreign-born residents matter for democracy the same way native-born citizens’ trust does?2 The purpose of this study is not to answer normative questions such as these, nor claim that a decline in MPT is unrelated to acculturation processes. Instead, this study seeks to approach political trust among foreign-born populations as it has been among native-born populations in advanced democracies. More specifically, this study has two main objectives: 1) to point out conceptual and methodological gaps in existing explanations for declining MPT and 2) to further explore the evaluative origins of declining MPT. Repositioning research on MPT will not only reveal potential alternative explanations as to why MPT is declining, but also explore whether this decline is related to the broader “crisis” of migration governance in Europe. Can differences in host government performance in the domain of migration policy explain variation in MPT across Europe?
To answer this question, in Chapter 2, I first refer to the long-standing political trust literature in order to develop the conceptual framework that will guide this study. As mentioned previously, this framework is structured around heightened expectations and declining evaluations, and thus Chapter 2 is organized accordingly. In Chapter 3 I
2 This study defines migrants as individuals born outside of the country in which they reside. This will be
use this conceptual framework to first take a critical look at the handful of existing studies on MPT and then establish a link between declining MPT in Europe and national migration governance. In Chapter 4 I present three hypotheses for the relationship between national migration policies and MPT, borrowing insights from recent studies that explore whether differences in policies explain certain economic, social and political outcomes among migrants. In Chapter 5 I use multilevel techniques, European Social Survey [ESS] data, and governance and policy indices to estimate models and test the three hypotheses. Finally, in Chapter 6 I discuss the results of the empirical analysis, explore their implications, and consider remaining questions and potential avenues for future research.
Low trust suggests that something in the political system […] is thought to be functioning poorly. It may be that performance is poor, or that expectations are too high, but either way low trust tells us that something is wrong (Newton 2001, 205).
Among native-born populations in advanced democracies, low trust has launched substantial scholarly inquiry into why trust is low and what this means for democratic governance. However, research on a similar phenomenon among migrant populations in Europe has largely ignored these insights, and thus insufficiently considered the consequences of this trend for migration governance in Europe. This study seeks to advance current understandings of declining MPT and in doing so demonstrate the significance of this trend for the fate of migration governance in Europe, and for the future of diversity in democratic societies.
2. Conceptual Framework
Before presenting the conceptual framework that will guide the analysis of MPT in Europe, I want to begin this chapter with a discussion on political support. It is important that this discussion precedes the conceptual framework because current understandings of political trust are to a great extent shaped by scholarly debate over the differences between political trust and support, and the implications of these
differences. Again, this debate is driven in part by challenges in measurement, as Norris (2011) points out: “Ideas such as ‘political trust’, ‘democratic values’, ‘political
disaffection’, and ‘systems support’ are far from simple. Their measurement is not straightforward. And the thoughtful interpretation of the underlying meaning of the evidence is even more complicated” (19). For some scholars, the difference between the two terms is simply operational, “trust” being the term used in surveys to measure respondents’ political support (Miller 1974; McLaren 2010). But for others the
differences are more consequential, and it is therefore important to position the current study within this debate (Citrin 1974; Norris 1999, 2011).
2.1 Political support, political trust and the Miller-Citrin debate
In one of the foundational works of political science, Easton (1965) defined political support as “an attitude by which a person orients himself to an object either favorably or unfavorably, positively or negatively” (1975, 436). Easton explained that these
orientations develop both from socialization processes and evaluations of institutional performance. He also emphasized the importance of these orientations, explaining “where such support threatens to fall below a minimal level […] the system must either provide mechanisms to revive the flagging support or its days will be numbered” (1965, 124).
Beyond theorizing the origins and importance of political support, Easton also distinguished between diffuse and specific support, diffuse support being a “durable evaluation […] independent of outputs and performance in the short run” and sustained through feelings of legitimacy, compliance and general welfare” (445, 1975). Specific support, on the other hand, “reflects the satisfaction a member feels when he perceives his demands as having been met” (125, 1965). These two types of support are also directed at different objects. Whereas diffuse support is directed at the political regime and national community, specific support is “directed towards the political authorities and authoritative institutions” who are held responsible for short-term changes (440, 1975). In simplest terms, diffuse support concerns what the system is, and specific support what the system does. This view of political systems marked the beginning of decades of scholarship that would attempt to determine exactly how to measure support, and what changes in these measures meant for political systems.
Why is this conceptualization of political support important for political trust? Originally, Easton (1975) categorized political trust under diffuse support because “the presence of trust would mean that members would feel that their own interests would be attended to, even if the authorities were exposed to little supervision or scrutiny”, which he argued meant trust is a “deeper socially approved feeling” that can “survive the actions” of political actors (447-449). However, this view of trust was soon contested. In the late 60’s and early 70’s, American scholars began to note that political support, measured in the National Election Survey as “trust in government”, had begun to decline.3 In their well-known exchange, Miller (1974) and Citrin (1974) debated the implications of this decline. Miller, loyal to Easton’s categorization of political trust, claimed that the decline in trust reflected a decline in diffuse support:
3 An American public opinion survey conducted before and after both presidential and congressional
While discontent that exists only for a short time and acts as a catalyst for needed change may reflect a functional political system, extended periods of widespread political malaise suggest that the normal means by which conflict is managed in the political system are not fully operative. A situation of widespread, basic discontent and political alienation exists in the U.S. today (951, 1974).
Miller (1974) was less concerned with the difference between trust and support, seeing only operational differences between the two concepts: “the use of political trust as a simple barometer of satisfaction with the political system is too often ignored or buried beneath theoretical concerns” (971).
However, as Citrin (1974) would show, the actual meaning of “trust in
government” was consequential for Miller’s claim of widespread and enduring political discontent. Citrin (1974) argued that the declining “trust in government” actually reflected the erosion of specific support: “many political cynics are expressing the conviction that ‘times are bad’ rather than repudiating the political regime on
ideological grounds” (987). He presented evidence to show that there was not a problem with the system, but instead with how current authorities were operating within the system. This was in part because trust as a measure of support was imperfect: “At a minimum…the ‘Trust in Government’ scale fails to discriminate between the politically alienated and those who mistrust particular leaders or politicians as a class without repudiating regimes values or institutions” (976), which led Citrin (1974) to emphasize the importance of operationally distinguishing between the support of different political objects.
This scholarly exchange over the interpretation of declining trust in government blurred the Eastonian distinction between political trust and support. In an update to his original work, Easton (1975) acknowledged the conceptual ambiguity:
We do encounter difficulty in empirically isolating differences between trust and specific support…we ought not to allow this difficulty to obscure the theoretical differences between the two and their significance for understanding the functioning of political systems. The task of research is to provide the ingenuity for discovering
appropriate measures for theoretically significant, even if at times subtle, distinctions (450).
The literature since has indeed attempted to develop measures for these subtle distinctions. Instead of focusing on attitudinal distinctions, Norris (1999, 2011) focuses on the objects of these attitudes. Building off of Easton (1965) she distinguishes
between support for the community, regime principles, regime performance, regime institutions and political actors. Through an empirical analysis of political trust across the globe, Norris’ (2011) findings fit with Citrin’s (1974) argument that democracy as a political system is not in danger of collapse and that “most citizens in well-established and in newer democracies share widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democracy”. Dalton et al. (2004) conduct a similar cross-national analysis and conclude that “instead of posing a challenge to democratic ideals, changing levels of political support are affecting the style of democratic politics” (200). In other words, when respondents report less trust in government, they are primarily referring to objects of specific support.
While concepts are distinct early on in these prominent works, they grow less so by the conclusion of the empirical analysis, which the authors themselves admit: “the ambiguity and potential measurement error when operationalizing the complex concept of political trust means that relying solely upon these indicators is unwise” (Norris 2011, 64). This potential measurement error creates problems for the interpretation of results, which further feeds the conceptual debate (Dalton et al. 2004; Pharr & Putnam 2000; Norris 2011). Indeed, this lack of conceptual and empirical clarity poses a challenge for political trust research. “Trust, support, confidence and legitimacy are all closely related terms, but are used in the literature in different ways in different
matter is that there is no agreement in the literature on how this should be done” (Kaase & Newton 1995, 60).
Whether trust and support actually differ and how to measure this difference is a point of continued debate. The methodological implications of this are revisited in Chapter 5, but for now the purpose of elaborating on these debates in the literature on political trust is to 1) give an idea of the vast history behind the concept of political trust, 2) emphasize the amount of scholarly attention that has been paid to decreasing political trust across advanced democracies, and 3) contextualize this study within the broader literature. This study will continue with the assumption that low levels of political trust reflect discontent with political institutions and actors, and not discontent with democracy (Citrin 1974; Norris 1999, 2011; Dalton et al. 2004; Pharr & Putnam 2000). However, while this study assumes that democracy as a regime is not in danger, nonetheless, “support for democratic principles should not devolve in blind trust in the performance or institutions” (Van der Meer 2016b). Indeed, as scholars point out, changes in political trust should spark institutional reform and checks on political power (Klingemann & Fuchs 1995; Norris 2011). As Dalton et al. (2004) put it, changes in trust “represent the driving force of democratic development” (vii). The role of political trust in democracy will be further discussed in Section 2.4.
On a related contextual note, the ensuing discussion on political trust will mainly refer to Western democracies, the only exception being a brief review of global trends in Section 2.2. This is largely because the majority of research on political trust has been conducted in North America and Europe, and because scholars are fascinated with the fact that trust is low precisely in the kind of political system where it is expected to be high. It goes without saying that the literature would benefit greatly from expanding research beyond the West, which some scholars have already pursued (Van der Meer
2016b). This is especially true in the context of migration and the resulting changes in demographics.
To conclude this section on political support, the current study is less interested in the distinction between support and trust, and more interested in considering the causes and consequences of low trust in political actors and institutions in democratic settings. In the following section I present a more detailed conceptualization of political trust followed by an extensive review of existing explanations for why political trust
changes. This conceptual framework guides the subsequent critical analysis of existing explanations for declining MPT wherein I argue that despite a vast political trust literature reflecting decades of scholarly inquiry, the cause behind declining MPT in Europe remains unclear. What can these long-standing explanations of political trust in advanced industrialized democracies contribute to the phenomenon of declining MPT in Europe?
2.2 Conceptualization of political trust
a. Definitions and origins
Trust, in its most basic sense, is a relational concept. Trust is “a holding word for a variety of phenomena that enable individuals to take risks in dealing with others, solve collective action problems or act in ways that seem contrary to standard definitions of self-interest” (78). Trust binds relationships together and facilitates action and
cooperation where otherwise improbable. “A trusts B because he presumes it is in B’s interest to act in a way consistent with A’s interest…[this] initial grant of trust depends on one person’s evaluation that another will be trustworthy” (78). Trust is a key
component in relationships, and this applies also to the relationship between people in a society and the political institutions and actors put in place to govern them (Levi 1998).
Under which circumstances do people come to trust the government? There are two competing approaches to the origins of trust: cultural and institutional (or rational choice):
Cultural theories hypothesize that trust in political institutions is exogenous [and] is hypothesized to originate outside the political sphere in long-standing and deeply seeded beliefs about people that are rooted in cultural norms and communicated through early-life socialization. Institutional theories, by contrast, hypothesize that political trust is politically endogenous [and] is the expected utility of institutions performing satisfactorily…trust is rationally based; it hinges on citizen evaluations of institutional performance (Mishler & Rose 2001, 31).
Easton (1965) also emphasized processes of socialization and evaluations of
government performance in his original definition of political support. Although some scholars emphasize one approach to trust over the other, this study will follow the following widely-used definition: “political trust is the ratio of people’s evaluation of government performance relative to their normative expectations of how government ought to perform” (Hetherington & Husser 2012, 313). As shown in Table 1, this study considers the evaluative component of this definition to account primarily for
institutional approaches to trust, while “normative expectations” account for cultural approaches.
Table 1
Two approaches to political trust
theoretical basis property definition
cultural exogenous normative expectations
institutional
(rational choice) endogenous evaluations of institutional performance
Note: Adapted from Figure 1 on p. 34 in Mishler & Rose (2001).
If political trust is a ratio of evaluations to expectations, a decline in political trust reflects either increasing expectations, decreasing evaluations, or a combination of both (see Figure 1). As mentioned in Section 2.1, both explanations appear in the
literature, although most empirical evidence points to declining evaluations of
government performance (Mishler & Rose 2001; Norris 2011). The lack of evidence for cultural approaches to trust is integral to the central claims of this study, as it is this approach to trust that has guided analyses of declining MPT. The following section further details these two approaches and demonstrates the importance of institutional approaches to trust for research on MPT.
Figure 1
Political trust defined as a ratio
b. Heightened expectations
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” – Winston Churchill
i. Cultural theories: origins of political trust
Understanding how people form expectations requires a venture into broader literature. While a detailed account of political socialization processes is extraneous, it is worth elaborating on the role of political culture in shaping political trust. Almond and Verba (1963) defined political culture as the “particular distribution of patterns of orientation toward political objects among the members of the nation […] people are induced into it just as they are socialized into nonpolitical roles and social systems” (14-15). The political system is “penetrated by overarching social values” and so are
297). Mishler and Rose (2001) add, “Virtually from birth, individuals learn to trust or distrust other people by experiencing how others in the culture treat them and
how…others react to their behavior”. This tendency to trust (or not trust) is projected onto political institutions, which in turn institutes a culture of trust and diffuses a positive or negative “predisposition toward representative institutions and democratic governance” (34).
If political trust is a product of socialization processes and reflective of a general tendency to trust, is political trust related to generalized trust (social trust)? Indeed, this question has been the subject of extensive study. In fact, Almond and Verba (1963) argued that social trust is integral to political trust, as a “balanced commitment to politics seems to be related to the existence of more basic social values – widespread social trust and a high evaluation of considerateness and generosity in people” (297). This is also central to Sztompka’s (1998) “culture of trust”. Trust is “neither a
calculated orientation, nor a psychological propensity, but a cultural rule” (66). For Sztompka (1998), “political trust is seen as the reflection of a wider climate of trust obtaining in a society” (14).
Putnam (1993) is well-known for his argument that social trust is crucial to the proper functioning of a society, and that in order to avoid a Hobbesian state of conflict, members of a society must trust one another. This trust, he claims, is fostered through shared social norms, networks of civic engagement and membership in various
associations. He provides evidence to show how differences in cultures of trust between two regions in Italy “turn out to play a key role in explaining institutional success” (15). Scholars have extended Putnam’s argument, claiming that social trust is a determinant of political trust (Kaase 1999; Nannestad 2008; Dinesen & Hooghe 2010). However, while this link between social and political trust may be theoretically compelling, the
evidence is mixed at best (Mishler & Rose 2001; Newton 1999, 2001; Zmerli & Newton 2008; Cook et al. 2009; van der Meer 2016b). As Levi (1998) concludes, “There seems to be as much evidence for the non-transference as for the transference of trust” (84). The relationship could even run reverse in that a trustworthy government makes for a more trusting public, an argument for which there is indeed some evidence (Schyns & Koop 2010). For these reasons, social trust will not factor into this study.4
Regardless of whether political trust is contingent on the existence of social trust, for the current discussion we assume there exists a political culture that shapes individual political trust. Global trends, at least according to some measures, lend evidence to the existence of political cultures (see Figure 2). The overall trend is that political trust is found to be highest in illiberal regimes and lowest in democratic regimes (Van der Meer 2016b). Within Europe, political trust is highest in Northern Europe and lowest in Southern Europe and in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe. The former Soviet Union is often cited as having a political culture of mistrust, where the “existence of untrustworthy institutions […] has resulted in a socialization process in which individuals learn to distrust other people and institutions” (Mishler & Rose 2001, 5). In the Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea display the lowest levels of political trust while China, Vietnam, and Singapore the highest, confirming the overall democratic-authoritarian trend. On the other hand, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab region, and Latin America are
characterized by relatively low levels of trust, which run counter to the trend elsewhere – again revealing the need for more research on political trust across a wider range of regimes (Van der Meer 2016b).
These global trends in “cultures of trust” appear less clear-cut in other studies
Figure 2
Global trends in political trust
Note: Figure from Van der Meer, T. (2016b). Political trust and the ‘crisis of democracy’. In Dalton, R. (Ed.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Figure 3
Comparison of political trust trends between World Values Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey (EVS)
Note: Figure from Van der Meer, T. (2016b). Political trust and the ‘crisis of democracy’. In Dalton, R. (Ed.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(Norris 2011; Van der Meer 2016b). Scholars contend that this is in part due to the challenge of measuring trust, as trust in one country may mean something entirely different in another. In fact, some countries exhibit different trends depending on the survey (see Figure 3). More importantly, there are also individual-level demographic factors such as education, age, and gender that risk being ignored by cultural
generalizations. Almond and Verba (1963) argue that the greatest source of variation within a political culture is education level, which they theorize positively influences people’s awareness of politics and increases their expectations of government
performance (110). This claim has mixed empirical evidence, and others have claimed that education may also encourage “significantly more critical evaluations how
democratically countries are being governed” (Norris 2011, 131).
Gender, age, and income level have also been theorized to influence levels of political trust, although again with mixed empirical evidence (Alford 2001; Mishler & Rose 2001; Norris 2011; Catterberg & Moreno 2005). While some scholars have
consistently found females, older citizens, and more affluent citizens to be more trusting of the government (Dalton et al. 2004; Pharr & Putnam 2000; Catterberg & Moreno 2005), others have found either the reverse to be true, or then no evidence of a link between these factors and political trust (Alford 2001; Newton 1999; Norris 1999).
Notwithstanding this conflicting evidence, others have argued that demographic factors matter more for political trust than the existence of a “culture of trust”
(Sztompka 1998). Demographic predictors of trust in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab region are “virtually identical to those found in other regions of the world, challenging conventional wisdom that African political attitudes and behaviors are qualitatively different” (Hutchison & Johnson 2016). This evidence shows the risk associated with assuming that people within a certain region, country, or culture have a tendency to trust
or not trust the government. Thus, while demographic factors may not be deterministic, they are significant. The implication behind this conflicting evidence is elaborated in the next section.
ii. Cultural theories: changes in political trust
Despite mixed evidence for cultural approaches to political trust, a prominent theory for the decline in political trust hinges on the existence of a political culture. As part of his argument that democracy was not in danger, Citrin (1974) claimed that it had become “fashionable to denigrate politicians and to criticize established institutions”. Since this claim, the idea that political cultures in democracies have grown more critical has garnered support as a compelling explanation for declining political trust (Norris 2011). As soon as populations feel more secure about survival, they began to shift away from authority, not wanting to subordinate personal goals to a broader entity:
Postmaterialists…take their prosperity for granted and transfer their focus to other aspects of life, such as politics and the quality of the physical and social environment…The rise of Postmaterialist values is one symptom of a broader Postmodern shift that is transforming the standards by which the publics of advanced industrial societies evaluate governmental performance (Inglehart 1997, 297).
These changes in values lead to changes not only in expectations but also in norms, which gradually influence processes of socialization and the ways in which political trust is learned. A Postmodern public is less trusting of elites, less open to government control, increasingly autonomous, and increasingly critical.
This explanation of heightened expectations reconciles some of the conflicting findings on demographic variables. For example, in his study on political trust in the U.S., Alford (2001) concludes, “the most striking pattern across these demographic variables is the breadth and similarity of the trend in trust among all groups” (39). This lends evidence to the argument that publics in advanced democracies are, as a uniform political culture, growing more critical and holding their government to higher
standards. Postmodernization may also be why education level has an increasingly negative effect on political trust. Building off of existing findings on the empirical relationship that is multidirectional (Norris 2011), Hakhverdian and Mayne (2012) find that “citizens with more education are not only more likely to be better able to identify practices that undermine the smooth functioning of democratic institutions, they are also more likely to be normatively troubled by such practices” (18). Thus, the relationship between education and trust is neither unidirectional nor linear. Additionally,
Postmodernization aligns with the fact that trust is much higher in authoritarian regimes than in democratic regimes: “In the short run, economic development tends to bring rising levels of political satisfaction; in the long run, however, it leads to the emergence of new and more demanding standards by which governmental performance is
evaluated” (Inglehart 1997, 298).
There are problems, though, with this explanation for declining political trust. To begin with, the theory of Postmodernization may only be applicable in the American context in which it was developed. Listhaug and Wiber (1995) show that in Europe, younger, more educated people are more likely to trust national parliaments, and this relationship is rather weak. Indeed, the decline in trust as it happened in the U.S is not a universal phenomenon. Postmodernization “fails to provide an adequate explanation for the trendless fluctuations in system support observed in both established democracies and other countries worldwide” (Norris 2011, 135). Furthermore, although Hakhverdian and Mayne (2012) present findings that confirm why Postmodern citizens have
heightened expectations, the authors ultimately conclude that “rather than being something fixed and deeply culturally embedded trust is generated through a process that is fundamentally evaluative in nature” (19).
This last point emphasizes the empirical reality that “cultural theories furnish a partial answer” (Norris 2011, 121). Existing evidence reveals the danger in making generalizations about political trust according to country, culture, or demographic background. Defining a “culture of trust” is also challenging when cultures are constantly changing over time space. Furthermore, in her analysis of global trends in trust, Norris (2011) points out that “issues of reciprocal causation complicate the analysis of the results…there are many plausible reasons to make up expect this relationship to reverse; for example […] rational choice accounts suggest that trust is most widespread where governments are trustworthy” (140).
Indeed, the literature has seen greater emphasis on the institutional approach. In his study on trust in Western and Southern Europe, two regions that cultural theories predict to have exogenously different levels of trust, Torcal (2016) states:
The persisting cross-national differences in political trust in this region have predominantly been attributed to cultural or attitudinal differences or distinctive institutional settings, giving a much more secondary role to citizens’ evaluations of their system’s performance. However […] an increasing number of scholars have argued that such-cross-national differences reflect different evaluations of the performance of those same institutions.
Due to the fact that cultural theories hold that trust is exogenous to political systems they imply that these systems cannot shape, influence or respond to the sentiments of their publics. At least in a democratic context, this makes the study of political trust rather inconsequential and denies the likely reality that governments have an effect on the orientations of their publics. And even if expectations are rising due to cultural changes, this does not imply that government performance is free from fault (Newton 2001).
While this study is skeptical of the cultural approach to political trust, understanding this approach is important for the critical examination of existing explanations for declining MPT in Chapter 3. The following section presents the
institutional approach to political trust which emphasizes the other driver behind changes in political trust: declining evaluations of government performance. How is political trust linked to government performance? What criteria are used to evaluate government performance?
c. Declining evaluations
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” - Mark Twain
i. Institutional theory: origins of political trust
Institutional theorists claim that we do not choose to trust others, but rather, “once we have relevant knowledge […] that knowledge constitutes our degree of trust or distrust” (Hardin 2006, 17-18). This means that political trust is directly linked to the performance of political systems, as opposed to exogenously determined by a political culture: “political trust and distrust are rational responses by individuals to the
performances of institutions” (Mishler & Rose 2001, 36). These responses to
government performance are particularly important for democracy where the “ultimate criterion of performance is citizen’s collective judgment” (Pharr & Putnam 2000, 22). This section details different areas of government performance, how performance in these areas is measured, and why these evaluations might vary or change.
Before detailing these areas of government performance it is necessary to clarify who or what is meant by “government”. At the system level, “trust is often based on assessments of reliability, trustworthiness of the organization’s representatives or agents” (Cook, Levi, & Hardin 2009, 8). If we return to the debate over political support, Citrin (1974) indeed argued that it was “the personal qualities and policy orientations of the presidential candidates” that citizens referred to when evaluating the government. Certainly, many studies define evaluations of performance as judgments of
honesty and other ethical qualities of public officials, their effectiveness, and the correctness of their policy decisions (Stokes 1962; Levi 1998).
Other scholars emphasize the importance of distinguishing between political actors and institutions: “People can trust the government while, at the same time, distrusting the president and vice versa” (Hetherington 2004, 11). Evidence does show that the decline in political trust in the United States is not equal across all three
branches of government, as the most consistent loss of trust among the American people has been directed at Congress (Norris 2011, 69). The reasons for this may be due to the fact that “Leaders of the executive branch […] are evaluated primarily on partisan and performance terms […] confidence in the leaders of the judicial branch is completely unrelated to partisan and economic performance concerns” (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2001, 80).
But when evaluating government performance, do people actually distinguish differences between institutions and actors? According to Bernstein (2001), when evaluating the executive and the legislature, “most citizens rate the two institutions while wearing a set of blinders…large numbers of respondents appear to be swayed the most by their overall cynicism” (115). In other words, it doesn’t appear to make a difference what part of government is being evaluated. Evidence from Europe also suggests that political trust is largely one-dimensional; any measurement of trust applies to politicians and other political bodies (Hooghe 2011). In his review of political trust literature, Van der Meer (2016b) concludes, “Despite conceptual distinctions between various objects of political trust…political trust may not be as object –specific as the more evaluative approaches in the literature assume”. The relevance of this discussion for the current study is primarily methodological and will be revisited in Chapter 5 where measures are detailed.
Of primary interest to scholars is how governments are evaluated. Most studies focus on 1) quality of government 2) procedural fairness and 3) policy outcomes. As shown in Table 2, performance across these areas is measured primarily either through public opinion, official data, and/or expert-developed indices. The purpose of this section on rational approaches to trust is to highlight how the erosion of political trust has been explained through declining evaluations. Therefore, instead of detailing each area of performance and each method of measurement, the next section presents existing findings on the circumstances and contexts in which we can observe how variation in performance evaluations over space and time affect levels of political trust, emphasizing those that are most relevant for this study.
Table 2
Areas of performance and methods of measurement
area of performance method of
measurement
quality of
government procedural fairness policy outcomes
public opinion X X X
official data X
expert-developed indices X
(field experiments) X
Note: Adapted from Figure 10.1 on p. 193 in Norris (2011).
ii. Institutional theory: changes in political trust
Across the political trust literature, the strongest, most consistent explanation of cross-national variation in political trust is quality of government, usually measured through expert-developed corruption indicators. Van der Meer (2016b) states quality of government is “the major explanation of cross-national differences in political trust […] Corruption invokes uncertainty and inequality both at the macro-level (policies that are agreed upon by the government) and at the micro-level (the implementation of these
policies in daily life) […] corruption is the epitome of bad government”. It is thus no surprise that most cross-national studies in the political trust literature use this measure of performance.
However, corruption is less useful to describe within-country changes in trust because it is a quality that is rather slow to change over time. In addition, Van der Meer (2016a) points out that this measure can often crowd out rivaling explanations of political trust. In a recent study he found that by including the impartiality of the executive in the analysis, not only does this variable display strong, significant and consistent effects but it also reduces the explanatory strength of corruption, suggesting there may be other factors at play (Van der Meer 2016a). The role of corruption in this study will be further detailed in Chapters 4 and 5.
Procedural fairness is another prominent measure of performance as “trust may be based on the belief that institutional processes encourage dutiful conduct and punish wrongdoing” (Citrin & Luks 2001, 25). Grimes (2016) defines procedural fairness as adherence to both formal and informal rules, including the extent to which the process “conforms to a specific normative conceptualization of democracy” and “how removed a decision procedure is from the public eye”. She adds that most existing evidence supports a link between perceived fairness and political trust, meaning that public opinion data is the ideal measure of fairness to explain political trust. Tyler (2001) also finds that trust judgments are “responsive to assessments of the fairness of decision-making procedures used by authorities” (238).
The challenge with public opinion data, though, is to understand exactly “which approaches to decision-making meet with more positive or skeptical assessments” on the part of the citizens (Grimes 2016). Field experiments have, in part, offered a solution to this problem by putting into place different decision-making structures
across various settings and testing the effect of these structures on trust between
participants (Esaiasson, Gilljam, & Persson 2012; Grimes 2008). Although these studies are not specific to political trust, the results do appear to hold in “real-life”. Banducci, Donovan, & Karp (1999) demonstrate how the shift from majoritarian system to proportional representation in New Zealand positively influenced voters’ view of the extent to which the parliament responded to their concerns. In general, though, research in this area of performance is still developing.
The point regarding procedural fairness that is most relevant for the current study is the idea that “responsiveness to citizens’ input may also infringe upon other principles central to democracy, such as political equality” (Grimes 2016). If political systems are responsive to the demands only of the citizens, this might pose problems for some migrants. What responsibility do democratic political system have in responding to the input of non-citizens? This will be discussed in Section 2.4. Apart from this discussion on the responsiveness of democracy to migrant populations, though,
measures of procedural fairness on political trust will not be included in the analysis in part because the focus of this study is policy outcomes but also because understandings of procedural fairness and trust are still evolving.
Beyond quality of government and procedural fairness are policy outcomes, usually measured either through self-reported satisfaction in public opinion data or with official data. Regarding the former, Hetherington (1998) explains, “if people perceive that the government is pursuing policy goals with which they agree, then they should trust the government more” (793). He presents evidence from the United States showing that people develop more trust when they consider policies to be effective and
congruent to their expectations. The influence of policy outcomes is also dependent on the domain: international crises generally tend to increase political trust and “rally the
public” as “people are more inclined to think collectively because only government can respond to the threat” (Hetherington & Rudolph 2008, 499-501). On the other hand, Americans tend to be more critical of domestic issues such as taxes and welfare redistribution.
Similar evidence has been found in Europe. For example, McLaren (2010) explains that like the United States, individuals in Europe “tend to be increasingly less favorable toward using the institutions of the state to reduce poverty and provide welfare as a result of perceptions of cultural differences between groups who access these services” (McLaren 2010, 7). Some Europeans believe that migrants make up a majority of these groups. McLaren (2010) indeed finds a strong empirical relationship between concerns about migration and lower levels of political trust, leading her to conclude, “the individuals who are most worried about immigration in these countries are thus likely to specifically blame elected institutions and politicians for allowing immigration in the first place and distrust these institutions and officials as a result” (9). If policy domain and political context matter for political trust, which policies are most important for MPT in the current European context?
It is worth pointing out that actual policy outcomes and perceptions of these outcomes are not one in the same. This is obvious when public opinion data on policy outcomes is compared with official data. McLaren (2010) notes this in her study: “Perceptions of immigration appear to stem from something other than actual levels of immigration” (16). Furthermore, in shifting from foreign and welfare policies to economic policy, the difference between perceptions of outcomes via public opinion data and outcomes represented by official data is even more pronounced. Many scholars have linked the health and growth of the economy to levels of political trust (Citrin & Green 1986, Miller 1983; Hetherington 1998). For example, Hetherington (2004)
concludes that although U.S. presidents who held office during pronounced declines in political trust tended to also face struggling economies, “as is often the case in politics, the perception of government performance is more important than the reality” (800). Other studies confirm a link between subjective economic indicators (i.e. peoples’ satisfaction with the economy) and political trust, but scant evidence for objective indicators (i.e. GDP) (Van der Meer 2016b). There are a few notable exceptions. In Europe, for instance, the decline in political trust after the Great Recession “is
statistically explained by the downturn on three macro-economic indicators” (Van der Meer 2016b).
It is worthwhile to briefly consider why perceptions might diverge from reality. Existing research points to the media. Kaase (1999) explains that due to the “wide gap” between political processes and the normal life of citizens, “it is little wonder that the mass media…have assumed a central mediating role in this relationship” (13). Some have argued that the media actually plays a direct role in the erosion of political trust in the United States (Hetherington 1998, 2002; Norris 2011). The modern media is
“fixated on government ineptitude and malevolence” making it nearly impossible to return to pre-1960’s levels of political trust (Hetherington 2002, 270).
However, other authors have found mixed evidence for this link (Newton 2006; Bovens & Wille 2008), namely that the effect of media on public opinion and
confidence in the government is often mediated by other factors including people’s interest in and knowledge of politics and their socioeconomic background. Park (2016) even finds that although media has a weak effect in Asia, the relationship is positive (those who consume more media are more trusting or the government), which runs counter to expectations from the United States and Europe. There are challenges in researching the effects of media because media content can be both a cause and
consequence of the public’s changing orientations (Dalton 2016), and thus establishing the direct effect of the media is “riddled with tricky methodological problems” (Newton 2006, 225). Pharr and Putnam (2000) ultimately conclude that “we need to look
elsewhere than television news for the source of our political ills” (250). While the media is not the focus of the current study, it is worth keeping in mind for future
research, especially in regards to migration – a highly publicized and politicized issue in Europe.
Beyond evaluating policy outcomes at the national level, institutional theories also hold that individuals will evaluate the government’s role in their personal
circumstances: “Individuals who are unemployed or whose personal finances have suffered from what they believe to be government policies are likely to be less trusting of political institutions than are those in better or improving economic circumstances” (Mishler & Rose 2001). Empirical support for these theories, though, is mixed. While Norris (2011) finds that individuals who are more satisfied with their finances, health and life in general were also more satisfied with the government, other scholars have found mixed or no empirical evidence for such a link (Dalton et al. 2004; Hetherington 2005). Norris (2011) herself is unconvinced, as life satisfaction could also reflect “a general sense of well-being, which spills over into feelings about government, as an affective orientation acquired in early childhood” – which would then support cultural theories of trust. Indeed, determining whether the effect taps into endogenous
evaluations or exogenous demographic variables is complex. This contested link between individual circumstances and government performance is also a symptom of aggregation problems, in that government performance “ is only part of the political
story, because many other devices are available to citizens for accomplishing their collective purposes” (Hardin 2013, 37).5
Nevertheless, it has been argued that people are the best judge of their own circumstances. “Many services crucial to individuals and families […] are regulated and providing by governments. The quality of the services received, for any given amount of resources expended is likely to be higher where the overall quality of government is higher” (Halliwell 2003, 20). This line of logic has also driven research on exploring whether people’s racial backgrounds influence the extent to which they trust the government. Evidence shows that political trust is weakest among African Americans with “high levels of racial group consciousness… unhappiness with black’s current resources in relationship to others, and the belief that these inequalities are a product of discrimination on the part of [whites]” (Avery 2007, 329). However, Alford (2001) finds almost no difference in levels of political trust trends among whites and blacks over a 40-year period in the United States. Despite the mixed evidence for the link between racial background and government performance, similar lines of logic resurface in explanations for MPT in Chapter 3.
d. Heightened expectations or declining evaluations?
The previous two sections demonstrated that institutional approaches to political trust garner more empirical support than cultural ones. Certainly, it would be naïve to claim that the two approaches are mutually exclusive, or that either approach matters more regardless of time or space. This is particularly true for migrants as they change political contexts: “Legacies and contrast to the previous regime, performance of the institutions, spillover from trust in other institutions may all play a different role in
different periods of time” (Zavecz 2016). Still, while Mishler and Rose (2001) admit that “their contrasting dynamics and countervailing predictions can interact in ways that befuddle causal assessments”, after comparing the two approaches to trust they
ultimately conclude that evidence points to institutional explanations.
The current study will follow from this conclusion. In fact, I argue that existing explanations for declining MPT fail to sufficiently explore declining evaluations among migrants and therefore undermine the relevance of MPT to European political systems. This is not to say that culture does not matter, just that government performance is more consequential for the current study. “Institutionalists accept that culture can condition institutional choice, as can the past performance of institutions, but neither culture nor past performance is deterministic” (Mishler & Rose, 2001). It is from this perspective that I will analyze existing explanations for declining MPT in the following chapter.
2.3 Importance of political trust for democracy
In reviewing the vast literature on political trust, the question arises as to why such extensive scholarship has been dedicated to explaining the decline in political trust if most scholars agree that support for democracy remains stable. Do changes in
political trust matter for democratic governance? According to most scholars, and to democratic principles, it does matter. “Trustful, allegiant political norms are essential to a stable effective democracy” (Almond & Verba 1963, 31). For Hetherington and Husser (2012), political trust matters because “people need to trust government to support more government…” (313). This support can be manifested in a vote, in active participation, or in a willingness to comply with government demands. Even in Europe, where the declining trend in political trust has been less pronounced, “there remains genuine cause for concern in the disparities observed between public expectations and evaluations of how democracy works in practice” (Norris 2011, 83). Whether these
disparities are due to heightened expectations that result from processes of post-modernization, or to declining evaluations of performance, both have important implications for governance.
Some scholars argue that a critical view of government is part of a mature and healthy democracy and that it is citizens’ role to scrutinize authority (Hardin 2013). This follows the idea that changes in political trust are fruitful as they initiate institutional reforms that strengthen political systems and result in policies that best represent the aspirations of the electorate (Norris 1999, 2011). Still, this does not imply “blind trust” (Van der Meer 2016b). The trends in political trust that have been observed are not necessarily standard reactions to the ups and downs of modern politics. If the heightened expectations or declining evaluations implied by these trends remain unaddressed, the gap between expectations and performance can have important consequences. “If citizens feel the authorities can no longer be trusted, there is less reason to comply with social norms or with the laws of the country” (Zmerli & Hooghe 2011, 2).
With this brief discussion of the importance of political trust, the conceptual framework has come full circle, as it was the contested importance of the decline in trust that lay at the core of the Miller-Citrin debate. For Miller (1974), the decline had grand implications for democratic regimes while for Citrin (1974), it was simply a signal that American political leadership was in need of a refresher. This study will proceed to the case of migrants in Europe taking the position that while democracy in Europe may not be facing a full-blown crisis, declining levels of MPT may serve as a signal for change, posing new challenges for democratic regimes in Europe.
Before reviewing existing explanations for declining MPT in Europe, I want to close this chapter with a note on the link between citizenship and political trust – a link
that is taken for granted in the political trust literature. Does citizenship enhance the importance of an individual’s level of political trust? If an individual is not a citizen of the democratic country in which they reside, do their levels of political trust matter for government performance?
2.4 A note on citizenship and political trust
As is somewhat obvious in the preceding sections, most conceptualizations of political trust revolve around the relationship between citizens and the institutions that govern them. Many of the prominent works in the political trust literature (Norris 1999, 2011; Dalton et al. 2004; Newton 1999; 2001; Pharr & Putnam 2000), knowingly or not, refer specifically to a “citizen’s” trust in government, framing it as a component of membership in a democracy: “trust links ordinary citizens to the institutions that are intended to represent them” (Mishler & Rose 2001, 30). Furthermore, as mentioned in the previous section, the scholarly attention paid to political trust is largely due to the fact that “the existence of distrustful citizens is a barrier to the realization of the democratic ideal” (Aberbach & Walker 1970, 1199). As members of a democratic society, not only do citizens have the right to express their feelings towards the regime, but these expressions of opinion are considered consequential and integral to a well-functioning democracy. This is how a democracy earns the right to govern:
“…democratic legitimacy is based on rational consent…Individuals must be empowered to actually express consent or dissent in a way that has an impact on collectively binding decisions” (Baubock 2010, 304).
However, if we approach trust from the relational perspective and consider it in its most basic sense, then the importance of one’s trust in government has little to do with citizenship. Citizenship is not a precursor to having trust or distrust. Trust is a calculation of risk: “trusting becomes the crucial strategy for dealing with an uncertain
and uncontrollable future” (Sztompka 1999, 25). People’s trust in the government, or lack thereof, is a result of residing in a political territory, and not necessarily of their citizenship status. Non-citizens are “clearly affected by political decisions in much the same way as citizens” (Baubock 2010, 279). While citizenship status might influence a person’s level of trust, it does not determine whether they grant trust, nor should it determine the extent to which these expressions of trust matter for governance.
In fact, because those without citizenship status may have limited means through which to express their content or discontent with government performance, low trust amongst non-citizens “is probably more harmful to democratic institutions than low participation” (Fennema & Tillie 1999, 705). Baubock (2010) goes so far as to argue, “…just as nominal citizens, foreigners do not formally choose to be members of a certain local community; membership results automatically from residence. It therefore makes sense to also derive the rights of active participation directly from that fact of residence rather than from nominal citizenship” (303). While the motivations of this study are not philosophical, it is important to note the tension between residence, citizenship and legitimacy in democratic political systems.
This chapter thus concludes with the idea that individuals, regardless of their citizenship status, grant trust in the government based on knowledge of that
government’s performance, and, to some extent, due to cultural influences. Easton’s (1965) conception of political support was indeed foundational:
It is rarely that people act just on the impulse of trust, or blindly follow a rule demanding trust, without any consideration of trustworthiness: of reputation, performance, appearance, accountability, and situational constraints of those on whom they consider conferring trust. It is equally rare to find people acting as perfectly rational calculators of trustworthiness, free from any personal predilections or cultural pressures (100).
With this approach to political trust in mind – one that is shaped not by citizenship status but instead by cultural context and, to a larger extent, cognitive calculations – I
now move to the phenomenon at the focus of this study: declining MPT in Europe. Changes in political trust are signals, and a democracy is organized in a way that the political system should respond to this signal, regardless of whether it comes from citizens or from residents. If migrants in Europe are reporting low levels of trust in the bodies that govern them, what is “wrong” with democracy? To what extent can these low levels of trust be explained by migrants’ heightened expectations and by their declining evaluations of host government performance?
3. Declining migrant political trust in Europe
This chapter reviews the three main explanations provided by existing studies for declining MPT: 1) attitudinal acculturation, 2) frame of reference, and 3) barriers to integration. These three explanations seek to address two points: 1) why migrants report high levels of political trust upon arrival in their host country and 2) why these levels decline over time. I present each explanation and then analyze it within the conceptual framework outlined in Chapter 2. In doing so, I argue that while these studies present compelling evidence for declining MPT due to heightened expectations, insufficient attention has been paid to migrants’ evaluations of host government performance. This is largely because these studies fail to take insight from the long-standing political trust literature – a literature that arguably exists to explain a decline in political trust.
Before detailing these three explanations, it is important to clarify the meaning of terms such as acculturation, assimilation or integration. There has been extensive theoretical and conceptual inquiry into these terms but this study refers to Berry’s (2005) definition of acculturation as “the dual process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cultural groups and their individual members” (698). Assimilation and integration, then, are two of four acculturation strategies, along with marginalization and separation. Berry (2005) defines integration “when there is an interest in both maintaining one’s heritage culture while in daily interactions with other groups” (705). Assimilation, on the other hand, is when “individuals prefer to shed their heritage culture, and become absorbed into the
dominant society” (705). Separation takes place when people individuals make an effort to hold onto their original culture and avoid interaction with others, while
marginalization occurs where there is little interest both in cultural maintenance and in relations with others.
This definition is not embraced by all, and some scholars have argued that these distinctions are problematic. For example, Rudmin and Ahmadzadeh (2001) point out that “it is almost an oxymoron to say that people have ‘marginalization strategies’” and that integration according to Berry (2005) is a “choice”, when in many cases it is not (43). Indeed, the distinctions between these terms have grown ambiguous. As I present the existing explanations for declining MPT, the conceptual clarity between these terms will fade, especially as the authors that are referenced use integration to mean
acculturation, or vice versa. This lends further evidence that the acculturation framework is in some ways unsuited to capture migrants’ experiences with the host society and how these experiences shape their trust in the host government.
3.1 Attitudinal acculturation: heightened expectations
The explanation for declining MPT that garners the most attention among scholars is the heightening of expectations due to attitudinal acculturation (Maxwell 2010, 2013; Röder and Mühlau 2012). Acculturation is a process during which values, attitudes and patterns of behavior are expected to change as migrants spend more time in their host countries. Migrants in Europe are increasingly exposed to Postmaterial values and increasingly likely to adopt these new values, which then guide their orientations within society and their expectations of host governments. Migrants migrating to Europe from less advanced democracies are entering contexts where it is not only accepted or fashionable but even expected that people hold government institutions and actors to high standards. Thus, MPT declines as migrants adopt
expectations similar to their native-born, “critical citizen” peers (Norris 2011; Inglehart 1997). This explanation of declining MPT is rooted in the influence of political culture on levels of political trust.
The strongest evidence for this explanation is the gap in levels of political trust between migrants and their children. Maxwell (2010) elaborates on the role of
generational status in shaping evaluations of government performance, explaining that migrants’ children who were born in the host society are “more likely to share natives’ educational and cultural experiences and therefore their evaluations” (26). Their parents, on the other hand, “have undergone conscious sacrifices and may be prepared to accept difficult circumstances as the price for moving to their chosen host society” (30). Maxwell (2010) then uses data on language skills, length of time spent in the host country, and generational status to demonstrate how generational differences in political trust are evidence of attitudinal acculturation.
However, Maxwell (2010) uses data from the ESS, which is conducted in the host country language. This suggests that in terms of acculturation, respondents are already rather assimilated or integrated. Those who have insufficient language skills, and therefore have either arrived recently or have pursued other acculturation
“strategies”, are excluded. In addition, approximately one-third of the foreign-born ESS sample are intra-EU migrants (NSSDS 2012) for whom the logic behind this
explanation may be less fitting as many are moving between Postmodern societies (i.e. would the attitudinal acculturation explanation apply to a German migrant living in Denmark?). An additional methodological issue is whether the measures of language skills and length of residence truly capture acculturation. Do children of migrants report similar levels of political trust as their native-origin peers for the same reasons?
Maxwell (2013) develops new measures for attitudinal acculturation in a later study. He shows that most of the spatial variation in MPT is accounted for by the positive attitudinal correlation between migrants and natives living in the same sub-national region. He argues that this is because migrants and natives in the same region
interact with each other and are “exposed to similar political stimuli, events, and issues that should shape their political attitudes in similar ways” (120). Maxwell (2013) supports these claims by showing that (1) the higher the level of media consumption among migrants, the smaller the gap between their attitudes and those of native-origin individuals and (2) migrants with more migrant friends have larger gaps in political trust compared to natives than those with fewer migrant friends. His analysis emphasizes the role of both political culture and the media in shaping expectations of government performance. Still, while his measurements are improved, data limitations prevent him from showing that native and migrant-origin individuals consume the same media sources, and that respondents with more migrant friends automatically have fewer native-origin friends.
This approach to declining MPT relies largely on cultural theories that view political trust as endogenously determined by a political culture. The methodology used to test this explanation, though, is problematic. It largely excludes migrants who have not integrated or assimilated and assumes that those who have more migrant friends are isolated from mainstream culture. Furthermore, evidence from the broader political trust literature suggests that cultural theories of trust are insufficient to explain changes in political trust. The remaining two explanations for MPT take steps forward in addressing institutional approaches, but still remain limited in their ability to step outside of the acculturation framework.
3.2 Frame of reference: adjusted expectations
According to the frame of reference explanation, migrants’ expectations of host government performance are influenced not only by culture, but also by performance context. That is, evaluations of host government performance are anchored in
