Executive authorities in Euroland during the financial crisis. A comparison between European commission and national governments

Abstract

The issue of trust or social capital, that is, the generalized trust, is important both in sociology and in economics. Trust is an important factor for creating and stabilizing support for political institutions. On the contrary, lack of trust in institutions denotes their failure to function according to the official standards, leading to a weak-state society relation. A lot of research was focusing especially on causal relationship between the individual-level social capital and the amount of trust people have in their institutions. The purpose of this study is first to shed light on this debate for a homogeneous number of democratic countries in the EU. Secondly to provide evidence that tight economic conditions serve as a hastening mechanism of distrust in institutions. In addition, the aims if this paper is understand the determinants of trust along with the impact of the economic crisis on this tendency to trust or not. (Roth et al., 2011)