Cross-national Analysis of Education and Trust: Context, Comparability, and Causal Mechanisms

Abstract

Based on existing studies on welfare and education regimes, the paper aims at strengthening the conceptual foundations of comparative research in education and trust by identifying relevant system-level characteristics, deriving analytical dimensions as a framework for cross-national comparison, and exploring how these dimensions might be linked to trust. The paper thus provides a better basis for dealing with context as well as its role in causal explanations and case selection in cross-national comparative research on trust in education.