What is the geography of trust?: The urban-rural trust gap in global perspective
What is the geography of trust?: The urban-rural trust gap in global perspective
What is the geography of political trust? Influential studies point to a growing urban-rural cleavage between low-trust authoritarian populists in rural areas and higher-trust liberal pluralists in densely populated urban areas. We use data from the World Values Survey and European Values Survey, covering nearly 100 countries, to test whether development has a moderating effect on the urban-rural divide in political trust. Our results reveal that at high levels of development, there are similar levels of trust in government between people living in urban and rural areas, while at low levels of development we find higher levels of trust for rural populations compared to those residing in urban areas. These findings add an important caveat to the standard account of the ‘geography of discontent’ in advanced industrial democracies, while suggesting the need for further investigation of the trust gap in the developing world and its implications. How trust is spatially distributed matters for how polities are governed, and is consequential for electoral behaviour, trends and outcomes.
McKay, Lawrence
4ecf2fd8-3fbf-4a3c-9c22-6856fc1a09be
Jennings, William
2ab3f11c-eb7f-44c6-9ef2-3180c1a954f7
Stoker, Gerry
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
1 April 2023
McKay, Lawrence
4ecf2fd8-3fbf-4a3c-9c22-6856fc1a09be
Jennings, William
2ab3f11c-eb7f-44c6-9ef2-3180c1a954f7
Stoker, Gerry
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
McKay, Lawrence, Jennings, William and Stoker, Gerry
(2023)
What is the geography of trust?: The urban-rural trust gap in global perspective.
Political Geography, 102, [102863].
(doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.102863).
Abstract
What is the geography of political trust? Influential studies point to a growing urban-rural cleavage between low-trust authoritarian populists in rural areas and higher-trust liberal pluralists in densely populated urban areas. We use data from the World Values Survey and European Values Survey, covering nearly 100 countries, to test whether development has a moderating effect on the urban-rural divide in political trust. Our results reveal that at high levels of development, there are similar levels of trust in government between people living in urban and rural areas, while at low levels of development we find higher levels of trust for rural populations compared to those residing in urban areas. These findings add an important caveat to the standard account of the ‘geography of discontent’ in advanced industrial democracies, while suggesting the need for further investigation of the trust gap in the developing world and its implications. How trust is spatially distributed matters for how polities are governed, and is consequential for electoral behaviour, trends and outcomes.
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Accepted/In Press date: 25 February 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 17 March 2023
Published date: 1 April 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This research was conducted as part of the Trust and Trustworthiness in National and Global Governance (TrustGov) project, supported by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) award ES/S009809/1.
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Local EPrints ID: 475783
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/475783
ISSN: 0962-6298
PURE UUID: bd4a7f60-3478-4966-8daa-6e1a11948dd8
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Date deposited: 28 Mar 2023 16:45
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:03
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