TrustGov

TrustGov It has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

TrustGov is a three-year international project, launched in February 2019 and directed by Will Jennings, Gerry Stoker, Pippa Norris and Research Fellows Jen Gaskell and Daniel Devine.

Our documentary with Silverfish Films about political trust and the trust crisis is out on YouTube now! Watch it here: h...
16/02/2022

Our documentary with Silverfish Films about political trust and the trust crisis is out on YouTube now! Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mJbplDCrWs

The documentary explores how diverse, ordinary citizens (from the UK, USA and Denmark) feel about their governments, political institutions, politicians and why they feel this way. The film highlights the state of political trust in the world and whether it has been declining in recent times; it also looks at what the consequences of this may be for our democracies and society. The documentary includes extensive interviews with multiple academics from the UK, USA, Denmark, France and Iceland, as well as various journalistic experts, community activists and ordinary citizens. Academics from TrustGov and beyond share their findings and ideas with the audience in an engaging and relatable way, woven together with the personal stories of ordinary citizens.

The TrustGov research project at the University of Southampton teamed up with the film production company Silverfish to create this documentary about politic...

The TrustGov research project at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the PolTrust research project at t...
09/04/2021

The TrustGov research project at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the PolTrust research project at the University of Amsterdam, presents a digital mini-conference on “The Geography of Political Trust” - taking part through Zoom on April 20th, 2021, from 14:00-17:15 UK time.

Registration is still open to anyone (free of charge) through our website, where you can also find details for the conference schedule: https://trustgov.net/events/2021/4/20/the-geography-of-political-trust

The conference will bring together some of leading scholars on the topic of the geographical dynamics of political trust around the world. It will consist of two 90 minute sessions, with an open 15 minute coffee break between them.

The TrustGov research project at the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the PolTrust research project at the University of Amsterdam, presents a digital mini-conference on “The Geography of Political Trust” - taking part through Zoom on April 20th, 2021, from 14:00-17:15 UK time. T...

  from UK in a Changing Europe is out now! Our very own Will Jennings writes: "Survey data from the British Election Stu...
19/01/2021

from UK in a Changing Europe is out now!

Our very own Will Jennings writes: "Survey data from the British Election Study reveals how political trust has been realigned since Boris Johnson came to power."

Find the full report at:https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Brexit-and-Beyond-report-compressed.pdf

The deadline for registering for our "Political Trust in Crisis" conference is at midnight tonight (BST)!We have 24 exci...
21/10/2020

The deadline for registering for our "Political Trust in Crisis" conference is at midnight tonight (BST)!

We have 24 exciting presentations of political trust research and two roundtables scheduled. On Friday, legendary academics will discuss the future of political trust research!

Full conference programme and registration form can be found at: https://trustgov.net/digital-conference-2020

Our digital conference on "Political Trust in Crisis" is this Thursday and Friday from 13:00-18:00 (BST) through Zoom an...
20/10/2020

Our digital conference on "Political Trust in Crisis" is this Thursday and Friday from 13:00-18:00 (BST) through Zoom and you can still register for free at https://trustgov.net/digital-conference-2020 until midnight tomorrow!

We have 8 very exciting panels (in four parallel sessions) and two epic roundtables scheduled - you can find the full conference programme on our website. On the Thursday at 17:00-18:00, we have a great roundtable of practitioners, discussing how we might build political trust!

You can find our paper in The Political Quarterly on "Covid‐19 and the Blunders of our Governments: Long‐run System Fail...
24/09/2020

You can find our paper in The Political Quarterly on "Covid‐19 and the Blunders of our Governments: Long‐run System Failings Aggravated by Political Choices" online!

"First, we argue that blunders occur because of systemic weaknesses that stimulate poor policy choices. Second, we review and assess the performance of governments on Covid‐19 across a range of advanced democracies. Third, in the light of these comparisons we argue that the UK system of governance has proved itself vulnerable to failure at the time when its citizens most needed it. Finally, we outline an agenda of reform that seeks to rectify structural weaknesses of that governance capacity."

More urgently than ever we need an answer to the question posed by the late Mick Moran in The Political Quarterly nearly two decades ago: ‘if government now invests huge resources in trying to be sma...

Our report on political trust in the UK, Brexit and Covid-19 with UK in a Changing Europe is out now! We ran focus group...
18/09/2020

Our report on political trust in the UK, Brexit and Covid-19 with UK in a Changing Europe is out now! We ran focus groups talking to people from both sides of the Brexit divide across England - it seems that "getting Brexit done" is already presumed by both sides so restoring trust will not be easy and will depend on competent handling of and recovery from the pandemic...

Will Jenning's report on Brexit and political trust highlights that the government has substantially squandered the trust people.

We don't just conduct surveys - we have also been running many focus group discussions around the UK about trust, Brexit...
11/09/2020

We don't just conduct surveys - we have also been running many focus group discussions around the UK about trust, Brexit and COVID-19 and will be conducting cross-national focus groups, elite interviews and survey experiments in the coming months.

In this blog for UK in a Changing Europe, Jen Gaskell, Gerry Stoker, Will Jennings and Dan Devine gave an early preview of our focus group findings about the response of the British government to the pandemic:

"The idea that owning up to mistakes is a prerequisite for trusting the government was raised in almost every group:

‘If you’ve messed up, tell us you’ve messed up you know, and why, and tell us what you’re going to do about it, don’t hide it from us. We’re big boys and girls now, we can handle it.’ (Ivy, Group 1, London, 27 May 2020)

Another strong narrative formed around moments of perceived ineptitude, exemplified by the PM’s first speech moving towards an easing of lockdown on 10 May.

This was frequently recalled by participants as a comic moment when faith in the idea that government had control of the crisis began to fade, with people quoting versions of the speech rather like their favourite parts of comedy sketches."
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/public-trust-and-covid-19/

Jennings, Gaskell, Stoker and Devine discuss their recent focus groups across England on public trust during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On August 20th, we published a report on political trust and COVID-19 in the US, UK, Italy and Australia in collaboratio...
10/09/2020

On August 20th, we published a report on political trust and COVID-19 in the US, UK, Italy and Australia in collaboration with Ipsos and the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.

In it, we find that about 2/3 of respondents in the UK perceived a high or very high threat from COVID-19 to the country, followed by about 60% in the US and Italy and only a third of Australians. Australians also reported the highest level of confidence in their government and the most positive evaluations of their leader's handling of the crisis.

Australians and Italians gave their leaders the most positive evaluations on handling by some margin and this went together with thinking that they had listened to experts in their decision-making. The public's evaluations of the performance of Boris Johnson and, especially, Donald Trump is much more negative.

However, substantial partisan differences remain in these responses and those differences are especially staggering in the US, where e.g. 79% of Democrats perceived a high threat to their country from the pandemic, compared with only 42% of Republicans.

The report is based on representative surveys conducted in the four countries in May and June and you can find the full report and coverage at: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/competence-matters-perceptions-leader-competence-handling-covid-19-tend-mirror-country-experience

Our September TrustGov Newsletter is out today!In particular, we'd like to remind you that the deadline for the call for...
09/09/2020

Our September TrustGov Newsletter is out today!

In particular, we'd like to remind you that the deadline for the call for papers for our upcoming Digital Conference 'Political Trust in Crisis' is next Tuesday - September 15th! We welcome submissions on political trust from scholars from all around the world and at any stage of their career!
https://mailchi.mp/8faac1c0a7d0/0dluqcab1o-4145809

Our August newsletter is out!Call for papers: Political Trust in Crisis, digital conferenceLatest publicationsOpen call ...
14/08/2020

Our August newsletter is out!

Call for papers: Political Trust in Crisis, digital conference
Latest publications
Open call for a special issue on Political Trust
And welcoming Lawrence McKay to the team!

https://mailchi.mp/e8385d653fb7/0dluqcab1o-4127193

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