Institutional trust, political participation, and corruption: A European comparative perspective

Despite the theoretical and political importance of the relationship between institutional trust and different forms of political participation in Europe, theoretical and empirical focus on post-industrial economies leave the literature wanting of explanations of cross-national variation in political participation. In this article, we test whether levels of corruption influence the relationship between institutional trust and participation. We rely on the 9th wave of the European Social Survey results for an in-depth analysis of the relationship between institutional trust, political participation, and perceived corruption in 27 countries. The multilevel regression analysis results show that the effect of institutional trust on institutionalised political participation (including voting) is moderated by corruption. However, corruption does not moderate the relationship between institutional trust and non-institutionalised forms of participation.