Political Trust and the Local Business Climate: Evidence from Sweden

A re-analysis of three Swedish studies of political trust at local level shows that the extent to which citizens trust the system of democracy in municipalities correlates strongly with how the employers in that area assess the state of the local business climate. This article deals with the question of how this can be understood. Three sets of underlying explanations are tested: social capital theory, a theory of local well-being and political-institutional conditions. The empirical analysis shows that only the theory of local well-being can explain consistently why political trust and a flourishing local business climate occur in concert. The study emphasises the need to expand research on political trust to also take into account the role played by the business climate. This has been completely ignored in previous research on political trust. Such knowledge would be highly relevant to local policy making. In order to capture the specific mechanisms at work, qualitative case studies of municipalities are suggested as the next step of research.