The Impact of Terrorist Attacks on Trust in Institutions: A Multi-Site Natural Experiment.

• In Event: Perception, Attitudes, and Identities Surrounding Extremism

Abstract

Results from previous research show that terrorist attacks lead to relatively short-term increases in trust in institutions. The explanation for this increase is known as the “rally effect”, whereby individuals respond to crises and threats with more positive support for political leaders and institutions. Even though the number of related natural experiments with survey data is increasing, these studies merely represent case studies of single incidents with limited external validity. In order to advance quasi-experimental research on the effects of terrorist attacks on institutional trust, we assess all jihadist terrorist attacks resulting in at least one civilian death in a European country that take place during the fieldwork of the European Social Survey and combine the results of nine unique natural experiments in six different countries using meta-regression techniques. Our results indicate that support for the rally-hypothesis is mixed at best. While some attacks appear to significantly increase measures of institutional trust (France 2015, Israel 2012), others seem to have no effect at all (e.g., Germany 2015, The Netherlands 2002), or even substantially decrease trust in domestic political institutions (Russia 2012). These results cast doubt on the unrestricted generalizability of the rally effect to different geographic, cultural, and historical contexts.

Authors

• Christof Nägel, Utrecht University

• Amy Nivette, Utrecht University

• Christian Czymara, Goethe University Frankfurt