Emerging political cleavages, party system polarization, and political trust in European politics: The role of ideological party polarization

In light of the growing polarization of European (party) politics and the concerns about its potential impact on the stability of European democracies, the study seeks to explore the dynamic relationship between party system polarization and political trust. It focuses on how party system polarization affects political trust by asking how ideological polarization and political trust are correlated. To this end, the Eurobarometer data on political trust and the data from the Manifesto Project on how different political parties within thirty European countries express their ideological stances over time (between 1990 and 2019) were utilized. Combining these data, a panel dataset of 155 observations was created. The analysis employed a fixed-effects (FE) model, regressing the outcome variables on the quantitative measure of ideological party polarization. When estimating the models, the causality from party system polarization to political trust was assumed. The research finds that average European party system polarization is increasing slightly over time, with the “political system”, “welfare and quality of life”, and “fabric of society” domains appearing to be the drivers of this upward trend. The research also suggests that there exist significant relationships only for two ideological domains, “freedom and democracy” (negative and significant estimates for the outcome variables trust in parties and parliaments) and “social groups” (positive and significant estimates for the outcome variables trust in parties, parliaments, and the government).