Congruence, national context and trust in European institutions

How can we explain the recent decline of trust in representative institutions of the EU in many of its Member States? This article presents evidence supporting the congruence hypothesis, according to which citizens have been extrapolating their increasing distrust in national institutions to the EU institutions. We also find that these contagion effects are produced by citizens’ evaluations of national governments. Furthermore, we show that these spillover effects from the national to the EU level tend to be stronger in situations of economic recession and political crisis. The only counterbalance to this contagion comes from citizens’ positive evaluation of EU performance. We test these general arguments based on a twofold panel analysis of the Spanish case, a country that has suffered a remarkable deterioration of political trust in a context of profound economic and political crisis, by analysing data from a micro-level panel study and 28 pooled surveys from the Eurobarometer between 1999 and 2015.

我们该如何解释欧盟诸多成员国近期对其代议机构信任度下滑的现象？本文提供了支撑契合假说（congruence hypothesis）的实证证据，该假说指出民众会将自身对国家机构日益加深的不信任感延伸至欧盟机构。研究同时发现，此类传染效应源于民众对本国政府的评价。进一步分析表明，在经济衰退与政治危机的背景下，此类从国家层面向欧盟层面的溢出效应往往更为显著。唯一能够抵消此种传染效应的因素，是民众对欧盟履职表现的积极评价。为验证上述核心论点，本文以西班牙为案例展开双重面板分析：该国在深刻的经济与政治危机背景下，民众对政治机构的信任度出现了显著下滑。本研究通过分析1999年至2015年间微观层面面板研究（micro-level panel study）的数据，以及欧洲晴雨表（Eurobarometer）的28组合并调查数据开展实证检验。