Culture or Institutions? A Quasi-Experiment on the Origins of Political Trust among Russian Immigrants in Europe

Political trust is an essential ingredient for the functioning of democracies. Cultural theory hypothesizes that trust in political institutions originates in deeply rooted and long-standing cultural norms, which are transmitted through early-life socialization and thus are exogenous to political institutions. By contrast, institutional theory views political trust as a direct consequence of institutional performance. This paper studies political trust in Europe within a quasi-experimental framework of migration. Results using European Social Survey data by itself or merged with the Integrated Values Surveys suggest that Russian-born migrants exposed to Western European institutions have higher probability of political trust than Russian-born migrants in Eastern Europe.