The existing literature on terrorism focuses on the “rally-around-the-flag-effect” – a relatively short-term phenomenon. The non-immediate effects of terrorist attacks on trust in institutions, however, remain largely unexplored. Arguing that maintaining law and order and upholding peace is considered the responsibility of the political and legal institutions in democracies, we theorize the “accountability effect” suggesting that terrorist activities indicate institutional failures in preventing casualties, undermining residents’ trust in these institutions. Using over 350,000 individual-level observations from the European Social Survey, we find evidence of the accountability effect showing that exposure to terrorist activities undermines self-reported trust in various national and international institutions, including the parliament, legal institutions, the police, politicians, political parties, the European Parliament, and the United Nations. Whereas this negative relationship does not weaken with additional terrorist attacks, strong governance and high trust in institutions mitigate these adverse effects. Lastly, terrorist attacks do not affect trust among people.

中文翻译：

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恐怖袭击和对机构的信任：来自欧洲的微观证据


现有的恐怖主义文献侧重于“围绕国旗集结效应”——一种相对短期的现象。然而，恐怖袭击对机构信任的非直接影响在很大程度上仍未得到探索。我们认为维护法律和秩序以及维护和平被认为是民主国家政治和法律机构的责任，我们将“问责效应”理论化，认为恐怖主义活动表明在防止伤亡方面的制度失败，破坏了居民对这些机构的信任。利用欧洲社会调查中超过 350,000 次个人层面的观察，我们发现了问责效应的证据，表明暴露于恐怖主义活动会破坏自我报告的对各种国家和国际机构的信任，包括议会、法律机构、警察、政治家、政党、欧洲议会和联合国。虽然这种负面关系不会随着恐怖袭击的增加而减弱，但强有力的治理和对机构的高度信任可以减轻这些不利影响。最后，恐怖袭击不会影响人们之间的信任。