Interrelationship between Public Trust in Governmental Institutions and Socio-Economic and Political Processes in the European Union

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse relationship between public trust in state institutions and the economic, political and social factors. The starting point for research was the issue of how public opinion is related to the real economic and political situation: does the public trust in state institutions and the government on the economic and political situation in the country or not? In addition, the important question is whether there are interdependencies between the countries of the European Union on this issue - does the increase of trust in public institutions in one country on public confidence in national governments in other countries. The theoretical basis of the study was the works related to the investigation of the phenomenon of economic voting. Also it was important to conceptualize the notion of "public trust" and the analysis of works devoted to this subject. It was decided to conduct a large quantitative comparative time-series study. Our hypotheses are formulated as follows: a change in a level of public trust may be associated with existing political and economic problems and processes, and in addition, that the rise and fall of public trust in some countries affect the countries related by a common culture or geographical location. The study is able to confirm the initial hypothesis. It was also demonstrated the existence of a correlation between the change in the level of public trust in the various countries of the European Union. But the question of finding the universal factors that affect the public trust, remains open.