This may explain why the findings from trust studies were inconclusive so far, with many reporting null results, especially in experimental settings. The effect of trust / government quality may be net neutral or even negative.
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I begin with descriptive statistics. Contradicting the expectations of the trust literature, countries with higher government quality have lower support for redistribution and unemployment assistance, on average.
At the same time, within-country variance of attitudes increases. This offers first support for my theory – public opinion is more varied under higher government quality.
On to regression-based evidence. I estimate interaction regression models with country fixed effects, modeling government quality as a moderator of income and unfairness perceptions.
The results show that effect sizes vary with government quality. Under higher government quality, income and unfairness perceptions considerably shift policy preferences. Under lower government quality, income and unfairness perceptions barely make a difference.
Further evidence shows that this primarily results from those I theorize as opponents of income equalization (i.e. high income / low unfairness perceptions) having disproportionally lower redistribution demand under higher government quality.
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