OP-PARL180025 1..20
Money, Sex and Broken Promises: Politicians’
Bad Behaviour Reduces Trust
Richard Rose1,* and Bernhard Wessels2
1Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde & Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin, Germany;
2Democracy & Democratization, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Berlin, Germany
* Correspondence: prof_r_rose@yahoo.co.uk
This article develops and tests empirically a theory of the effect on political trust
of forms of behaviour that violate social, political and legal norms about how pol-
iticians ought to behave. These include taking money for favours, over-indulging
in private life and making misleading promises to win votes. The evidence comes
from a specially designed survey in Britain, France and Spain, countries where
popular distrust of politicians appears greater than illegal political behaviour. Bad
behaviours, especially abandoning election promises once in office, have a much
stronger effect on distrust of political parties that do differences in partisanship.
Comparing national regressions shows that the impact of bad behaviours is very
similar in Britain, France and Spain.
Keywords: Distrust, Mandate, Misleading voters, MPs’, behaviour,
Over-indulgence, Taking Money
1. Introduction
For citizens to decide whether politicians are to be trusted or distrusted requires
applying standards to evaluate their behaviour. Standards are social constructs;
bad behaviour can refer to breaking legal, social or political standards (cf. Tänzler
et al. 2012). If the behaviour of politicians is consistent with laws and social
norms, this should encourage popular trust. But if popular representatives break
these standards, this should encourage popular distrust (cf. Mishler and
Rose 1997; Rose 2014).
The positivist approach of contemporary social science research favours defin-
ing standards by reference to reliable and verifiable measures. Laws are particu-
larly suitable for this purpose, since they are readily available formal statements
of standards. In addition to those applicable to all citizens, officeholders are sub-
ject to laws specific to their office, such as anti-bribery measures prohibiting the
# The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Parliamentary Affairs (2018) 0, 1–20 doi:10.1093/pa/gsy024
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abuse of public office for private gain. If politicians act within the law, this may
be deemed to make them trustworthy. Politicians whose behaviour is subject to
public controversy favour this approach because they can defend what they do by
emphasizing that their actions are legal. However, this standard reflects what
Jennings (1985) has described as ‘moral minimalism’, because it excludes ways in
which politicians can break public standards without breaking any law
(cf. Jennings et al. 2016).
Social norms are culturally constructed by combining informal standards held
in the mind and legal standards formally inscribed in statute books. Norms estab-
lish social psychological expectations about how people ought to behave. In their
relations with fellow politicians, officeholders are expected to comply with infor-
mal ‘rules of the game’ if they are to be trusted by colleagues (Fuchs 2007).
The norms that ordinary citizens apply to their political representatives can com-
bine standards used in their personal relations and specifically political standards.
Violating informal norms can be described as bad behaviour, while violating for-
mal standards is an illegal act (Rose and Peiffer 2018, chapter 1).
1
Insofar as poli-
ticians comply with social norms about how they ought to behave, this should
encourage political trust. Insofar as they behave badly, it should encourage
distrust.
Trust, a word with meanings varying with context (Levi and Stoker 2000), is
important for political institutions to implement collective decisions (Easton
1965). If there is a widespread belief that in unforeseen situations politicians will
act as beneficially as possible, politicians can expect widespread popular accep-
tance of their decisions (Newton 2007; Dowding 2018, p. 33f). Trust is particu-
larly important in theories of representative democracy. Citizens give direction to
government by casting their vote for the candidate or party that they trust will be
most likely to act in accord with their interests and values (cf. Miller and Stokes
1963). Theories of principal–agent relationships assume that voters, as political
principals, can trust the representatives they elect to act in accord with the man-
date that voters give them. However, a variety of realist theories and empirical
studies question whether politicians can be trusted to act honestly and to repre-
sent voters’ views (cf. Wlezien 2004; Gailmard 2014; Allen et al. 2016).
This article is innovative in developing a theory of how different types of bad
behaviour affect political trust and testing it with a specially designed survey
questionnaire. It differentiates legal, social and political types of bad behaviour
1
The term corruption was historically used to refer to violating standards of all kinds; this meaning
survives in reference to a computer file being corrupt. Because the term corruption has been loaded
with many different meanings (see Heidenheimer and Johnston, 2002; Rose 2014; Philp 2015;
Heywood 2017; Ardigo and Hough 2018; ), in this article the term bad behaviour is used to refer to
the violation of informal social norms about actions of politicians.
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and different types of punishment for each. To guard against contextual effects
confounding generalization, the data come from national sample surveys in
Britain, France and Spain, three countries where corruption in the legal sense of
bribery is not widespread but where there is evidence of limited trust in demo-
cratic representatives (Dogan 2005; Norris 2011). In all three countries, statistical
analysis shows that it is politicians’ violating their electoral mandate that gives the
biggest boost to distrust, Moreover, this effect remains strong after controlling
for differences in respondents’ partisanship and socio-economic status.
2. A theory of bad behaviour and distrust
The theoretical importance of trust invites the question: What causes individuals
to trust representative institutions central to democratic politics? Many theoreti-
cal explanations have been advanced (Zmerli and van der Meer 2017). They range
from social psychological predispositions to trust face-to-face relations and
perceptions of the political and economic performance of political institutions to
democratic institutions promoting trust (Warren 1999).
Theories tend to focus on political trust;
2
distrust and scepticism are treated as
residual categories (Mishler and Rose 1997). Because of our focus on the effect, if
any, of breaking standards, our model focuses on their effect on distrust
(Figure 1). Breaking three different types of standards—laws, moral social norms
or a political mandate—can increase distrust. In addition, the more severe the
punishment deemed appropriate for breaking a standard, the greater the increase
Standards broken
Laws
Social norms
Political mandate
Distrusts
representatives
Appropriate punishment
Severe
Minor
None
Controls
Partisanship
Socio-economic status
Figure 1. How bad behaviour influences political distrust
2.
A Google Scholar search on 21 February 2018 found 596,000 references to political trust, more than
twice the 262,000 for political distrust.
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in distrust. The model also controls for the potential effect of an individual’s par-
tisanship and socio-economic characteristics.
Our first hypothesis calls attention to three different types of standards that, if
broken, can increase distrust. By including social and political as well as legal
standards, it allows for a broader range of influences than an exclusive focus on
legal violations, such as taking a bribe. It also leaves open to empirical investiga-
tion whether the effect of each standard is independent of the others, whether
they form a single underlying attitude, or whether some standards have a signifi-
cant effect on trust while others do not (cf. Seyd 2016).
H1: The more people see politicians as breaking legal, social or political
standards, the more likely they are to distrust representative institutions.
Laws set out clear and enforceable rules for assessing whether a politician’s behav-
iour breaks a legal standard, and a law court can make a judicial determination
about whether or not a politician’s behaviour has broken a law. Lawyers are not
the only social scientists relying on laws as the major criterion for discriminating
between good and bad behaviour. Many social science definitions of corruption
instance violations of laws against bribery as a prime example. The theory and
practice of public administration focus attention on the adoption of laws and bu-
reaucratic regulations that will promote behaviour by officeholders that complies
with laws and regulations (see e.g. Rose-Ackerman and Soreide 2011). Deciding
what statutes define as legal and illegal is a responsibility of politicians. Where
anti-corruption laws affect their own interests, such as financing the cost of polit-
ical campaigning, politicians can include loopholes that effectively allow them to
accept money in ways that are legal but may be inconsistent with social norms.
National practices vary in the extent to which politicians are subject to special
jurisdictions, as has been the case in Britain when Parliament acts as the judge of
the behaviour of errant MPs (Hine and Peele 2016) or have immunity from pros-
ecution while in office (Wigley 2003).
Social norms set standards of behaviour that are appropriate and those that
are not. Instead of being set out in black-and-white legal statutes, they are in the
minds of individuals, comprising cultural values and beliefs relevant to social and
political roles (cf. Welch 2013). In a democratic political culture, for example,
norms emphasize that citizens ought to vote when an election is held and that
elected politicians ought to represent the views of their voters. The behaviour of
individuals in parliament and government reflects not only formal rules but also
informal norms (March and Olsen 1989; North 1990).
By definition, a democratic political system requires politicians to act in keep-
ing with their role as popularly elected representatives. Insofar as these standards
are widely shared in the population, they reflect non-partisan rather than partisan
values, for example, not making ethnic or racist slurs about fellow citizens. When
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deciding policies, politicians are expected to respect the mandate that they receive
from their voters (cf. Thomson et al. 2017). Politicians are also subject to norms
about personal behaviour that is inappropriate because it brings their public of-
fice into disrepute, such as appearing drunk on television or using unflattering
obscenities to describe other politicians, voters or countries (cf. Allen and Birch
2015).
Informal social and political norms cannot be enforced in a court of law but
they can be judged in the court of public opinion. Print, television and social me-
dia can hound politicians by publicizing activities that are deemed to violate in-
formal norms, and public opinion polls can act as a quasi-jury rendering a
popular verdict about whether the accused has engaged in bad behaviour. If poli-
ticians are ashamed by the exposure of behaviour they thought would be kept pri-
vate, they can resign office voluntarily. If they are hesitant to do so party leaders
can offer an embarrassing colleague a choice between resigning or being sacked
(Jacquet 2015).
Legal and normative standards of behaviour can be in conflict, since opin-
ions of citizens about how politicians ought to behave are subjective popular
judgments, while decisions about what is illegal are made in the courts. For ex-
ample, participants in the #MeToo movement have publicized politicians be-
having in ways that they judge as violating contemporary standards of gender
relations. Even though few politicians have faced court charges for such activi-
ties, many who are the object of #MeToo complaints have accepted that their
behaviour is shameful and apologised or left office. A similar disjunction be-
tween legal and informal popular standards was demonstrated when the parlia-
mentary expenses claimed by almost 400 British MPs were leaked. The media
headlined as scandalous expense claims, such as that for cleaning the moat
around one’s stately home. Only a handful of MPs were convicted of making
an illegal claim, but most MPs repaid some expenses that met parliamentary
standards but that they did not want to defend in public, and some decided not
to stand for re-election (cf. Kavanagh and Cowley 2010, p. 311ff, 398ff;
VanHeerde-Hudson 2012).
The punishment appropriate for breaking standards varies in accord with the
legal maxim that it should fit the crime. The more serious the violation of a stan-
dard is, the more severe the punishment should be. Moderate punishments can
be assigned to activities that are considered inappropriate for a public office-
holder but not damaging to public policy. Some activities may be tolerated and
not result in any punishment. For a politician to be photographed drunk in pub-
lic does no harm to anyone but himself or herself, while a politician who accepts
money for fixing a contract for a constituent who builds an unsafe bridge at a
grossly inflated cost violates both legal and social standards.
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H2: The more people see the violation of standards as serious, the more
likely they are to distrust representative institutions.
The punishment of Chris Huhne, a British Cabinet minister, illustrates gradations
of seriousness. When his car was caught by a speed camera, his wife pleaded guilty
to a speeding offence, an experience common to many Britons and not requiring
an apology. When months later Huhne was indicted for perverting the course of
justice by pressuring his wife to lie to the court to avoid losing his motoring li-
cence, he was so shamed that he immediately resigned as a Cabinet minister.
After pleading guilty to the charge, he also resigned his seat in Parliament and
was given an eight-month prison sentence.
Since bad behaviour by politicians may not be the only stimulus to political
distrust, our model controls for the effect of partisanship, which is often a signifi-
cant source of disagreement in the application of standards. A politician accused
of breaking standards may counter-charge by saying the attack is motivated by
partisan opponents. This response was employed by President Bill Clinton after
being impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and is
being used daily by President Donald Trump to defend himself in the court of
public opinion. Partisan loyalty can influence citizens to ignore bad behaviour by
other members of their party in accord with the maxim ‘my party, right or
wrong’.
Our model also controls for socioeconomic status, since sociological theories
hypothesize that differences in status influence attitudes towards corruption
(cf. Heath et al. 2016). A British study has found that higher-status people are
more likely to be tolerant of the behaviour of politicians and have more trust in
political institutions (Allen and Birch 2015, p. 117). Inglehart (1989) has devel-
oped theories about younger and older citizens differing in the social norms that
they apply in judging behaviour (cf. Schoon and Cheng 2010). Gender differences
in representation may lead women to be less trusting because fewer women hold
elected office.
3. Public perceptions of bad behaviour
Since democratic politicians are meant to represent citizens, a national sample
survey is an appropriate means for obtaining evidence about how the public per-
ceives the behaviour of their representatives. To complement the concentration
on breaking formal anti-bribery laws found in Transparency International’s
Global Corruption Barometer (www.transparency.org/), we designed a question-
naire to measure the extent to which people see politicians engaging in bad be-
haviour and how serious they think these activities are.
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http://www.transparency.org/
To avoid basing conclusions on a single national case, the Politicians Behaving
Badly (PBB) survey was conducted in three West European democracies, Britain,
France and Spain. They were chosen because, by the conventional measure of ille-
gal corruption, the payment of bribes is low in all three countries.
A Eurobarometer Survey (2014) found that only 2% of French respondents, 1%
of Spaniards and 0.4% of British respondents reported that they had paid a bribe
to a public official in the past year. In the global Corruption Perceptions’ Index
produced by Transparency International, all three countries are rated in the top
quarter, but they also differ from each other. The CPI rating of Britain is 82,
France 70 and Spain 57. The French-based survey organisation, Efficience3, con-
ducted telephone interviews with a random stratified sample of 1004 Britons be-
tween 4 and 22 January 2016; with 1003 French between 11 and 29 December
2015; and with 1000 Spaniards between 11 and 22 December 2015.
While each country has a distinctive history and political culture relevant to
corruption and scandals (cf. Della Porta and Yves 1997), in the years leading up
to the survey in all three countries there was substantial media publicity about
politicians breaking standards. The British media competed in headlining stories
of PBB in their private lives, offering to use their office in exchange for the pay-
ment of large fees, and misleading voters by making policy U-turns (VanHeerde-
Hudson 2012; Hine and Peele 2016). In France, Le Canard Echainé has regularly
published exposes of bad behaviour by leading politicians. The financial affairs of
former President Nicolas Sarkozy and economics minister and later IMF head
Christine Lagarde were subject to scrutiny and the sexual affairs of President
Francois Hollande were well publicized. In Spain a substantial number of cases
have been publicized about the illegal payment of money to major politicians in
established parties (Orriols and Cordero 2016). At the time of the survey Prime
Minister Mariano Rajoy was campaigning for re-election amidst allegations of in-
volvement of corruption and the former economics minister was on trial for cor-
ruption and subsequently convicted.
To assess trust in representative institutions, a single question was asked:
To what extent do you trust political parties? Replies were coded on an 11-point
scale ranging from 0, no trust, to 10, complete trust. The focus on parties rather
than individual politicians provides a common reference point across electoral
systems that differ in whether people vote for a party list, an individual candidate
or have a combination of choices. It also avoids the risk of contamination because
of the popularity or unpopularity of a locally elected MP or national party leader
at the time of fieldwork. National respondents differed only in the degree to
which they withhold trust from parties that represent them. The mean British re-
spondent gave the least negative rating, 4.2. In France the mean score was 3.7 and
in Spain 3.0.
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3.1 Breaking standards
Only a very small percentage of people are likely to have first-hand experience of
a politician behaving badly, while almost everyone is exposed to media stories
about politicians that can be used to evaluate them. Therefore, the PBB question-
naire asked people about their perceptions of politicians’ behaviour. While this is
not evidence of how politicians actually behave, it is sufficient to influence the
subjective judgments that people make about whether politicians are to be trusted
(cf. Figure 1).
The PBB question about politicians taking money—How many Members of
Parliament take money from people who want political favours?—was intentionally
ambiguous. It leaves open whether the money was an illegal bribe or was given as
a material reward to an MP who had legally done a political favour. The former
interpretation is implied when the British media videos a sting in which an MP
offers to take money to help a fictitious business interest (see e.g. Insight 2018).
When this is publicized, an MP usually claims that the payment was justifiable re-
muneration for representing an interest and no legal charge is made against the
MP (Insight 2018) Only one-third think that most or all MPs take money for do-
ing favours; the median respondent thinks that less than half do so, and those say-
ing hardly any do so outnumber the proportion saying all MPs take money for
favours (Table 1). Notwithstanding differences in how MPs are elected in Britain,
France and Spain, there is little difference between countries in the extent to
which MPs are seen as taking money for favours.
In all societies there is a distinction between behaviour that may be accepted
in private life, but which, if it becomes public, may be judged as a violation of so-
cial norms about how politicians ought to behave (cf. Sarmiento-Mirwaldt et al.
2016). While the media are quick to headline-specific examples of a politician’s
private life as scandalous, to find out if such stories are generalized to politicians
as a class the PBB survey asked: How many politicians in their private life over-
indulge in drink, sex or drugs? In all three countries, two-thirds or more thought
that only some or hardly any politicians over-indulged in their private behaviour,
and cross-national differences in perceptions were limited (Table 1).
A basic assumption of representative democracy is that citizens can compare
the different policies that politicians offer and vote for the one that comes closest
to their view, confident that, if elected, their choice can be trusted to deliver the
mandate that their voters give (Schumpeter 1952). To determine whether voters
trust politicians to do what they promise, the PBB survey asked: How many politi-
cians promise to do one thing if elected and then do the opposite after being elected?
The question made no allowance for politicians pleading extenuating circumstan-
ces when they execute a U-turn and abandon an election promise. Insofar as vot-
ers see politicians as unscrupulously seeking their vote, they are less likely to be
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trusted. Of the three standards asked about, the one most often seen as violated is
the political standard that politicians should not make misleading election prom-
ises. Among Britons, almost three-quarters see most elected representatives as po-
litical hypocrites; the proportion rises to more than five-sixths in France and
seven-eighths in Spain (Table 1).
All in all, the public tends to see the behaviour of politicians in shades of grey
rather than in black-and-white terms. Less than 2% think all politicians break all
three standards of behaviour and less than 1% think hardly any do so. Although
respondents were making an evaluation in their national context, their judgments
tended to differ more between types of activities than between countries.
In Britain there is a difference of up to 43 percentage points between the percep-
tion of most MPs misleading voters and most over-indulging in their private
lives, In France, the contrast between misleading voters and taking money or
over-indulgence rises to 58%. Spaniards likewise discriminate in their perception
of bad behaviour: There is a 68 percentage point difference between those seeing
politicians misleading voters and those seeing them over-indulging in their
private lives.
Table 1 Perception of violations of standards
How many politicians. . . Britain France Spain
% % %
TAKE MONEY: receive money from people who want political favours
All 8 6 5
Most 24 29 32
(Total) (32) (35) (38)
Some 53 45 55
Hardly any 15 20 8
OVER-INDULGE PRIVATELY: In drink, sex or drugs
All 9 7 3
Most 22 20 17
(Total) (31) (27) (19)
Some 55 49 67
Hardly any 15 25 14
MISLEAD VOTERS: Promise to do one thing if elected and then do the opposite after
being elected
All 35 44 40
Most 39 40 47
(Total) (74) (85) (87)
Some 23 12 13
Hardly any 3 4 1
Source: PBB Survey. Telephone interviews by Efficience3. Britain, 1004, 4–22 January 2016; France, 1003,
11–29 December 2015; Spain, 1000, 11–22 December 2015. Funded by Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin
Democracy & Democratization programme and Centre for the Study of Public Policy
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3.2 Seriousness of bad behaviour
The PPB survey included a nuanced measure of the seriousness of corruption.
Immediately after asking about the frequency with which a standard was broken,
people were asked what should happen to a politician who violates a particular
standard. Up to five alternatives were offered. They ranged from the most severe
in terms of its consequences—going to jail or leaving their office—to nothing
need be done. Intermediate categories included paying a paying a fine or publicly
apologising. Since these punishments are not mutually exclusive, respondents
could and often did endorse multiple punishments.
There is overwhelming agreement that breaking each type of standard is seri-
ous; on average <1% say nothing should be done. Even though making a public
apology is considered necessary, it is not deemed sufficient to deal with the viola-
tion of informal standards about how politicians ought to behave (Table 2).
There is little difference between Britons, French or Spaniards in the seriousness
with which people treat taking money for favours. Five-sixths think that politi-
cians who take money for favours should lose their post and more than half think
they should also go to jail. A majority likewise think that politicians who over-
indulge in their private lives should forfeit their public office, but few think such
behaviour deserves a jail sentence. The cross-national assessment of the minority
who over-indulge shows significant differences. In Spain, 71% think those who
do so privately should lose their public office, in France 56% take this view, and
in Britain 45% endorse severe punishment.
PBB respondents talk tough when asked: If someone you voted for did this (that
is, broke a promise), what would you do at the next election? More than two-thirds
of Spaniards and about three-fifths of Britons and French say they would vote for
someone else. Only one in nine say they would vote the same. However, replies to
this hypothetical question do not appear to be matched by the proportion of
Table 2 Seriousness of bad behaviour
Q. What should be done with a politician who breaks a standard?
Britain France Spain
% % %
Should lose job, votes
Type of behaviour
Takes money 69 93 87
Over-indulges privately 45 56 71
Misleads voters 61 58 72
Source: PBB Survey
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voters actually switching parties when a general election is held. One reason is
that bad behaviour and corruption in the legal sense are not the only issues
influencing voters. When asked about the three most important problems facing
government, only 5% of Britons and 8% of French mention it. In Spain, where
high-level corruption was very much in the news during fieldwork, it was named
by 22%. Moreover, partisan ties and information-awareness, plus economic
influences, can discount the effect of bad behaviour and corruption on voting
(Kla�snja 2017; Greene and York 2018, p. 514ff).
4. Testing the effects on political trust
Even though our three European countries appear similar in attitudes towards
PBB, it does not follow that the determinants of political trust are the same in
each country. To assess whether this is the case, we conducted separate regression
analyses in each country.
3
If the same indicator is significant in all three national
contexts, this is especially robust evidence of support or rejection of a hypothesis
and, if results are the same in two of the three countries, this shows substantial
support. To provide a clear focus on substantive relationships, we also report the
results of a regression analysis that pools the three national surveys (Table 3).
Given sample sizes of one thousand, we use 0.05 or lower as our standard for sta-
tistical significance in the three national analyses and 0.01 in the larger pooled
database.
Since the impact of significant variables on trust can vary substantially, we cal-
culate predicted probabilities for the effect on trust of an independent variable
changing from its lowest to its highest value.
4
Coefficients with a minus sign
show that the variable reduces trust, but the size of their impact varies. Thus, a
coefficient of �3.61 for the effect of politicians lying to get votes reduces Spanish
trust in political parties by more than three and one-half points on the 11-point
trust scale, while a coefficient of �0.93 for the effect of over-indulging reduces
trust by just under one point.
Altogether, empirical analysis provides strong support for our model of the ef-
fect of corruption on individual trust in the political parties that represent them.
In all three national analyses, the OLS regression accounts for a high level of vari-
ance: 27% in Britain, 26% in France and 25% in Spain in the pooled three-nation
analysis. Moreover, notwithstanding many historical differences between the
countries, there is consistency in the national evaluation of influences. The three
3
While a theoretical case can be made that corruption and trust have reciprocal effects on each other,
to test this with a Structural Equation Model requires variables that can serve as control instruments
and these do not occur in the PPB survey (cf. Wroe et al. 2013m, p. 179ff).
4
For details of variables and how they have been coded, see Supplementary Table S1.
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types of standards are significant in all three countries. So too is partisanship. In
contrast, the seriousness of punishment for violating standards is of limited sig-
nificance in all three countries, and so too is the effect of educational status.
There is extremely strong support for our first hypothesis (Table 3). If people
perceive politicians as breaking any of the three informal standards, they are sig-
nificantly more likely to distrust political parties. Moreover, the effect is found in
all three countries. The standard that generates the most distrust is central to the
theory of representative government: elected representatives should keep the
promises that they made to voters when seeking votes. After controlling for all
other influences, the pooled data analysis estimates that trust in politicians will
fall by 2.6 points among people who see politicians saying one thing to win votes
and doing the opposite once in office. The effect is biggest in Spain; dishonesty in
making political promises lowers trust by 3.6 points.
The effect of politicians being seen as taking money for favours is second in
impact. In the pooled data analysis it lowers trust in political parties by an esti-
mated 1.48 points. While this is substantial, the effect is two-fifths less than that
Table 3 Effect of breaking standards on trust in parties
OLS regression coefficient
Independent variables Britain France Spain All
Types of corruption
Mislead voters �2.149b �2.179b �3.635b �2.622b
Takes money �2.065b �1.035b �1.48b �1.479b
Over-indulgence �0.632 �0.797b �0.988b �0.677b
Seriousness of violation
Strict punishment �0.653a 0.071 �0.184 �0.377a
Corruption important problem �0.430 �0.099 �0.107 �0.317b
Partisanship
Supports governing party 1.570b 1.721b 1.083b 1.533b
Supports opposition party 0.796
b
0.914
b
0.692
b
0.826
b
Demographics
Gender female 0.184 �0.414b 0.208 0.001
High socio-economic status 0.254 0.129 �0.017 0.182
Low socio-economic status 0.198 0.360a �0.041 0.156
Constant 6.323 5.388 6.641 6.343
Number of cases 853 882 860 2595
Adjusted R
2
0.274
b
0.262
b
0.253
b
0.279
b
Note: All independent variables have been recoded to a range of 0–1. Regression coefficients show the maxi-
mum effect on the 11-point scale for trust of an independent variable moving from its lowest to its highest
value.
a
Level of significance (p < 0.05).
b
Level of significance (p < 0.01).
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of politicians breaking promises; moreover, the impact varies substantially be-
tween countries. It is twice as high in Britain as in France. If citizens think most
of their politicians over-indulge in their private lives, this has a significant effect
on trust too; however, this effect is less than breaking other standards. After con-
trolling for taking votes and taking money, in all three countries it lowers trust by
under one point (Table 3).
Contrary to hypothesis 2, measures of the seriousness of bad behaviour have
no consistent effect on political trust. Endorsement of the strictest punishment—
send violators to jail or eject them from office—has no significant effect in the
pooled data set or in France and Spain. While significant in Britain, the size of the
effect is much less than that for misleading voters or taking money (Table 3).
Moreover, in all three national surveys, people who see corruption as an impor-
tant problem do not differ significantly from their fellow citizens in their level of
political trust. The significant effect in the pooled data set is small and may simply
be a by-product of having three times as many interviews when calculation signif-
icance (Table 3). The contrasting findings for the first and second hypotheses
shows that it is not the seriousness of what is done but whether a politician
behaves badly that depresses trust.
4.1 Partisan effect
The importance of controlling for party loyalties is robustly confirmed. At the
time of the survey, the governing party in Britain was the Conservatives, in
France the Socialists held the presidency, and in Spain the Popular Party was in
office. Notwithstanding major differences between these parties, in all three coun-
tries those who voted for the governing party are substantially more likely to trust
parties (Table 3). The effect holds after controlling for the negative impact on
trust of believing that politicians who hold office renege on the promises they
make when campaigning to win office. While the halo effect of supporting gov-
ernments of different ideologies has a positive impact on trust, boosting it by as
much as 1.56 points in the pooled database, it does not offset the negative impact
of politicians breaking their promises to voters. Moreover, in Spain, where the
governing party has been mired in all kinds of allegations of bad behaviour, the
boost to trust among its supporters is less than one-third of the depressing effect
on trust of politicians misleading their voters.
In all three countries those who do not vote for the governing party consider-
ably outnumber government supporters. They include supporters of established
opposition parties that have been in government and hope to return; new parties
that have never been in government; and those without any party preference.
Established parties have the most grounds for being distrusted, since they have
previously been in government; they include the Labour Party in Britain, the
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Socialist Party in Spain and the Republicans in France. After controlling for all
other effects, in all three countries supporters of the governing party, whether
Socialist or conservative, tend to be significantly more trustful and supporters of
the established opposition parties significantly less trustful. Insofar as holding of-
fice encourages trust, this implies that the alternation of established parties be-
tween government and opposition will lead partisans to alternate between
sometimes trusting and sometimes distrusting a government that in theory is
democratically representative. In other words, the impact of partisanship is not
ideologically based; it reflects the temporary electoral success of competing
parties.
In preliminary regressions, we tested whether those who do not support estab-
lished parties rotating between government and opposition tend to be more dis-
trustful of parties. This is consistent with non-established parties such as UKIP in
Britain, the National Front in France and Podemos in Spain being described as
protest parties. In fact, it makes no difference in trust, even in Spain, where pro-
test parties were strongest at the time of the PBB survey. One possible explanation
is that in Spain the overall level of trust in parties was very low. In Britain by the
time of the survey at the beginning of 2016 the Conservative government was
seeking to regain supporters by implementing UKIP’s flagship policy of having a
referendum on the UK withdrawing from the European Union. Supporters of
protest parties were not significantly more distrustful than the national average
and the same was true for non-voters. In other words, those who have stopped
voting for the established parties of government are not so much angry as apa-
thetic about the claims of governors to be trustworthy.
Notwithstanding the emphasis in sociological theories on the pervasive effect
of socio-economic status on popular attitudes, empirical tests of the effect are in-
conclusive (cf. Heath et al. 2016; Zmerli and van der Meer 2017). None of the
three demographic indicators–high status, low status and being a woman—has a
significant effect on trust in the pooled analysis. The consistent failure of socio-
economic status to show a significant effect indicates that people who are more
informed about politics are just as likely to distrust political parties as citizens
with a secondary school education. The same is true for those with the low socio-
economic status, except in France, where the effect is marginally significant but
the impact is slight (Table 3).
Gender has no significant influence in the pooled analysis, Britain or Spain.
French women are inclined to be less positively trusting but the size of the effect
is small. In a preliminary regression analysis, we tested the effect of age which the
PBB survey divided into four groups. In all three countries the youngest group,
age 18–24, did not differ significantly in their trust from the oldest, over 55; the
same was true of the intermediate age groups. This implies that distrust in
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government is an all-age phenomenon independent of specific events in early so-
cialization or of any inter-generational changes in standards of private morality.
5. Implications for representation
Our evidence shows that to confine the effect of corruption on trust to actions
breaking laws is to misread the minds of voters. Breaking informal standards is a
major cause of distrust too. The most important informal influence on trust is
politicians saying one thing to get elected and doing the opposite once in office.
This implies that attempts to improve trust in politicians by adopting formal laws
will be inadequate, since major informal influences on distrust are within the law.
Although our theory is in principle applicable to all political systems, the evi-
dence comes from only three European countries. Notwithstanding differences
between the histories, institutions and party systems of Britain, France and Spain
it is striking that separate regression analyses come to the same conclusion. The
violation of informal standards about how politicians ought to behave substan-
tially depresses trust in democratically elected politicians. Whatever the standard
broken, the minimum punishment tends to be loss of office. Moreover, people
who think a less serious punishment is acceptable are just as likely to distrust par-
ties as those who consistently favour severe punishments.
A single survey cannot show whether perceptions of bad behaviour have been
increasing. Surveys over the past several decades show that distrust in political
parties and politicians is long-standing (Klingemann and Fuchs 1995; Norris
2011; van der Meer and Hakhverdian 2017). Whiteley et al. (2016) argue that
short-term changes in trust are simply fluctuations around a long-term equilib-
rium of limited trust. This suggests that many citizens have long-established pre-
dispositions to trust or distrust their representatives, views that are, at most, only
temporarily altered by events or the behaviour of a particular party leader (cf.
Allen et al. 2016).
Because standards of bad behaviour are informal, they are easily contestable.
In the absence of substantial evidence of wrongdoing, a politician accused of act-
ing badly can reject allegations. In the face of evidence, a politician can claim that
there is no wrongdoing as long as there is no violation of a formal legal standard.
When allegations and evidence of bad behaviour imply that laws have been
violated, as in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, the
response can be, as in the case of the Administration of Donald Trump, a
counter-charge against critics of corrupt or bad behaviour. Counter-charges
create a race to the bottom among parties ‘normalizing’ their behaviour by
making their opponents appear to be acting as they do. Insofar as counter-
charges are convincing, this is likely to fuel popular distrust in all politicians.
Bad Behaviour and Trust 15
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Partisanship qualifies the extent to which individuals distrust political parties
(cf. Anderson et al. 2005). Among those supporting the government of the day,
64% see all or most politicians as reneging on their promises, and this is the case
for 82% favouring establish opposition parties, 87% if without a party affiliation
and 89% of supporters of protest parties that have never been in government.
While the effect of being in government makes supporters more trusting, the fact
remains that a substantial majority in citizens, whatever their partisan status, see
politicians as misleading voters.
Distrustful citizens do not accept the classic Schumpeter (1952) model of
democratic elections as offering a choice between alternative parties of govern-
ment. Instead of seeing degrees of corruption that allow for a choice of one party
as a lesser evil (Cordero and Blais 2017), they see both alternatives as forming an
untrustworthy cartel (cf. Katz and Mair 2009). Confronted with a choice of par-
ties that cannot be trusted to keep their pre-election promises, citizens can decide
not to vote. However, while election results show fluctuations in turnout, there
has been no consistent downward trend in turnout in West European countries.
However, there has concurrently been a big rise in votes for unestablished parties
that have never been in government (Mudde 2016; Wagner and Meyer 2017).
In France, outsider candidates from the right and left took almost half the vote in
the initial round of the 2017 presidential ballot. In Spain, the two established par-
ties of government together won just under half the vote in 2016. In Britain, an
outsider party, UKIP, has been so successful in getting the Conservative Party to
adopt its major policies that it lost its own electoral support.
Although the bad behaviour of politicians has destabilized party systems, it
has not led to a loss of trust in democracy as an ideal (cf. Ferrin and Kriesi 2016;
Kumlin and Esaiasson 2012). Distrustful citizens are not voicing an attack upon
their democratic political system. They are expressing dissatisfaction with the ex-
tent to which politicians fall short of formal and informal standards of demo-
cratic behaviour that they would like political elites to change (Vasilopoulou
2018). In doing so, citizens are endorsing Winston Churchill’s (1947) defence of
democracy as ‘the worst form of government except for all those other forms that
have been tried’.
Funding
The work of the first-named author was supported by an Economic and Social
Research Council grant number ES/I03482X/1 about the global experience of cor-
ruption. The PBB survey was funded by the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the
Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde. Earlier versions
were presented to the Parliamentary Standards Committee of the UK Parliament
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and to the ECPR general conference, Prague, September 2016. Three anonymous
reviewers made helpful comments.
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