How Adolescents Evaluate Political Institutions and Develop Political Trust: A Cross‐National Study

Political accountability depends on citizens’ ability to critically evaluate institutional performance and bestow trust accordingly. Such evaluative judgments require both cognitive skills to process political information and normative standards against which institutional behavior is assessed. While adults’ trust is known to respond to institutional performance, it remains unclear whether similar evaluative mechanisms operate among adolescents, who are still maturing cognitively and politically. Drawing on developmental psychology literature and evaluative theories of political trust, this study examines how adolescents’ political trust is shaped by macro-level institutional quality and individual-level cognitive and normative resources. Using multi-level moderated mediation models and data from the 2022 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, covering 14-year-olds across 24 countries (N = 82,321), the study provides the first cross-national test of the evaluative nature of political trust in early adolescence. The results show that institutional quality influences political trust entirely indirectly through performance evaluations, with stronger responsiveness among adolescents with higher civic knowledge and stronger democratic norms. These findings demonstrate that political trust among emerging citizens reflects not only traditional socialization but also adolescents’ own appraisal of political institutions. The study advances theories of micro- and macro-level political socialization and highlights the importance of cognitive and normative resources in the early development of political trust.