Attitudes towards redistribution, and their links to political trust, are compared in Sweden and Norway using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Attitudes towards redistribution are quite similar in both countries at an aggregate level, but class differences and differences between left and right party sympathizers are larger in Sweden than in Norway. Levels of political trust and personal political efficacy are clearly higher in Norway, but in neither of the countries are there any links between political efficacy and trust on the one hand and attitudes towards redistribution on the other. It is concluded that arguments about such a link may be wrong in putting emphasis on political trust as a determinant of attitudes towards redistribution. A possible alternative interpretation of the findings in this paper is that they are specific to the Scandinavian countries, where welfare state intervention has been institutionalized to a higher degree than elsewhere.
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