CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Kochetova, Ekaterina |
|---|---|
| Title | Trust Issues: A Multi-Method Analysis of the Effects of Populism and Trust in Institutions on Confidence in Vaccines |
| Summary | This thesis seeks to disentangle the complex relationship between confidence in vaccines, populism and institutional trust. The scarce literature on vaccine hesitancy in political science suggests that the former is fostered by the surge of populism. By employing a multi-method research design, the thesis challenges this claim and argues that confidence in vaccines is rather dependent on the level of institutional trust. Firstly, based on the sample of all EU countries, the thesis tests the hypothesis about the link of vaccine hesitancy to populism through regression analysis and shows that this relationship is not robust. Secondly, it utilizes analysis of variance of the individual-level survey data to demonstrate the effect of institutional trust on confidence in vaccines. The analysis finds that, while trust in politics, science and medicine all affect vaccine confidence individually, trust in science and medicine have a statistically significant joint effect. Finally, to explore the relationship between the variables more in-depth, through analyzing Ireland and Hungary as a typical and a diverse case, the study shows that the level of populist support indeed does not play a determining role in the strength of the anti-vaccination movement, discussing the effect of trust in different institutions as well as additional factors, such as country immunization policy. |
| Supervisor | Sandor Judit |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/kochetova_ekaterina.pdf |
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