What explains political trust in Latin America? Understanding the role of the urban-rural divide

This paper examines the determinants of political trust in Latin America, focusing on the urban–rural divide. Using data from the 2019 Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) for eighteen countries, we analyze five dimensions of trust: trust in the president, Parliament, political parties, the Supreme Court of Justice, and the police. In contrast to most developed countries, political trust in Latin America is systematically higher in rural than in urban areas. To explain this pattern, we estimate ordered logit models for urban and rural subsamples and apply an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to separate compositional from context-specific effects. Education and income are consistently negatively associated with political trust, suggesting that higher socioeconomic status is linked to more demanding expectations, particularly in urban contexts. Changes in household income also matter: improvements increase trust, while deterioration significantly reduces it. Crime victimization and perceived insecurity are key drivers of lower trust, especially in cities, contributing to an “urban penalty.” The decomposition shows that about half of the urban–rural gap is explained by differences in observable characteristics, while the remainder reflects unexplained, place-specific factors. These results point to two contrasting dynamics: reducing urban insecurity may generate “upward convergence” in trust, whereas improving rural socioeconomic conditions alone may produce “downward convergence” by raising expectations. Overall, narrowing spatial gaps in trust does not necessarily strengthen democratic legitimacy, underscoring the need for policies that address both urban vulnerabilities and institutional performance.