How Does Education Affect Political Trust?: An Analysis of Moderating Factors
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How Does Education Affect Political Trust?: An Analysis of Moderating Factors Meral Ugur‑Cinar1 · Kursat Cinar2 · Tekin Kose3 Accepted: 4 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract This article aims to understand the correlates of political trust by delving into the multiple interactive effects of education in democratic states throughout the world. It asks whether education raises political trust by increasing the stakes of the citizens in the system and whether education diminishes trust as a result of being abler to evaluate the existence of corruption in a given country. It also taps into how post-materialism as an individual-level factor affects this equation by activating critical judgments toward political institutions. The findings show that, indeed, the effect of education on political trust is very contextdependent. Political trust and education are positively correlated in more meritocratic countries and negatively correlated in the more corrupt ones. Post-material values, combined with educational attainment, tend to lower political trust to a certain extent yet this effect is surpassed by the presence or absence of meritocracy or political corruption. We also find that the effect of education on political trust becomes more pronounced as the level of education increases, with university graduates being the most susceptible to the effects of meritocracy and corruption on their trust levels. Keywords Education · Political trust · Meritocracy · Corruption · Post-materialism
1 Introduction This article examines the context-specific effects of education on political trust. It does so by looking at how educational attainment is moderated by post-materialism, meritocracy, and political corruption in determining trust levels of citizens toward political institutions. While there are a multitude of valuable studies in the area of political trust and its correlates, there are still interesting research questions that beg addressing in the education–political trust nexus. As Mayne and Hakhverdian (2016, p. 1) argue, the role of education in political trust is not sufficiently analyzed since education is usually included as a * Kursat Cinar [email protected] 1
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
2
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
3
Department of Economics, TED University, Ankara, Turkey
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standard demographic control. Thus, cumulative evidence regarding the role of education is very limited and there is a lot to be done in that field (Mayne and Hakhverdian 2016, p. 1 and 24). The findings of the extant literature on the effects of education on political trust go in different directions and are inconclusive (Hakhverdian and Mayne 2012, p. 739). There are diverging views on this issue. The first body of literature claims that the more people are educated, the more they will trust the political system. The underlying lo
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