Conjoint Experiment on Trust in Policy Processes

This project examines citizens’ trust in public policy processes in contemporary Europe, focusing on which types of policy processes are more trusted depending on the actors who design and support them, as well as the policy domain involved. The study is based on original data from the EXPRESS2 Survey, a large cross-national public opinion survey conducted in 25 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. In each country, approximately 1,500 respondents are surveyed, yielding a total sample of around 37,500 individuals. Samples are designed to be representative of the adult population with respect to gender, age, and region of residence. The survey collects detailed information on political attitudes, including institutional trust, as well as political behaviour and attitudes towards gender equality and digitalisation. A central component of the project analyses how citizens evaluate and trust different policy processes, including those involving traditional political institutions and emerging forms of decision-making such as artificial intelligence. By combining cross-national survey data with experimental methods, the project identifies which configurations of policy actors, sources of political support, and policy domains are perceived as more or less trustworthy, and how these evaluations vary across countries. The findings are expected to contribute to academic and policy debates on democratic legitimacy, institutional trust, and the future of governance in Europe.