Open Access
A need for control? : political trust and public preferences for asylum and refugee policy
Loading...
Files
RSCAS 2020_01.pdf (1001.26 KB)
Full-text in Open Access
License
Cadmus Permanent Link
Full-text via DOI
ISBN
ISSN
1028-3625
Issue Date
Type of Publication
LC Subject Heading
Other Topic(s)
EUI Research Cluster(s)
Initial version
Published version
Succeeding version
Preceding version
Published version part
Earlier different version
Initial format
Citation
EUI RSCAS; 2020/01; Migration Policy Centre
Cite
JEANNET, Anne-Marie, ADEMMER, Esther, RUHS, Martin, STÖHR, Tobias, A need for control? : political trust and public preferences for asylum and refugee policy, EUI RSCAS, 2020/01, Migration Policy Centre - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/65735
Abstract
Political trust matters for citizens’ policy preferences but existing research has not yet considered whether this effect depends on how policies are designed. To fill this gap, this article analyses whether and how policy design and political trust interact in shaping people’s policy preferences. We theorise that policy controls such as limits and conditions can function as safeguards against uncertainty, thereby compensating for a person's lack of trust in political institutions in generating support for policy provision. Focusing on the case of public preferences for asylum and refugee policy, our empirical analysis is based on an original conjoint experiment with 12,000 respondents across eight European countries. Our results show that individuals’ trust in the political institutions of the European Union has a central role in the formation of their asylum and refugee policy preferences. Individuals with lower levels of political trust in European institutions are less supportive of asylum and refugee policies that provide expansive, unlimited, or unconditional protection and more supportive of policies with highly restrictive features. We also demonstrate that even politically distrusting individuals can systematically support policies that provide protection and assistance to refugees if there are limits or conditions on policy provision. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our findings to theoretical understandings of the role of political trust in the formation of individuals’ policy preferences.