Dynamic Trust and States’ Failure in Public Health: Evidence from a Global Time Series Data

Political trust plays a central role in understanding and theorizing any essential political question, such as regime support, democratic support, and policy preferences. However, we know little about the effects of different types of political trust on policy outcomes. In this study, I examine the relationship between trust in policy-making institutions, trust in policy-implementing institutions, and immunization rates using time-series cross-sectional data. I measure the two types of trust by employing a sophisticated Bayesian Item Response Theory model on 2,108 national surveys covering 150 countries over 47 years. The findings show that only trust in implementing institutions consistently boosts countries’ vaccination coverage. The finding highlights the importance of trust in implementing institutions in policy outcomes. Thus, This article calls for future studies on trust to pay more attention to how trust in implementing institutions improves governance and prepares states for future crises.