The overall purpose of the project is to shed light on the population's institutional trust in a socio-demographic and geographical perspective where inequality and differences between population groups are the main focus. Institutional trust is delimited to attitudes, perceptions and views of institutions that seem particularly relevant to national security and national security interests. In addition to political and democratic institutions such as the Government (executive power), Stortinget (legislative power) and the public administration more generally. This includes the courts (judicial power) as well as the police and the defense (as institutions that are particularly relevant to security issues). The project is empirically limited to Norway.
An underlying question is whether low trust – and inequality in trust – challenges the legitimacy that is necessary and which also affects the possibility of policy implementation, governance and communication between citizens and authorities.
The project is linked to previous and ongoing research at ISF, which enables us to benefit from knowledge and empirical data material that already exists. However, the primary data source for the project's empirical and descriptive surveys of Norwegians' institutional trust is DFØ's citizen survey 2021.
The project has three work packages:
- A research-based knowledge overview that briefly discusses the term "institutional trust" and summarizes the knowledge that already exists about the connection between trust and socio-demographic and geographical characteristics in the population;
- A descriptive analysis of different groups' trust in selected social institutions;
- A discussion of the findings in the light of considerations for safeguarding national security.
Publications
Segaard, Signe Bock & Saglie, Jo (2023). Institutional trust in different population groups in Norway: Knowledge overview and descriptive analysis. Department of Social Research.
