Specific Support, Diffuse Trust: Central Banks and the Mass Politics of Unconventional Monetary Policy

Central banks relied for a decade on unconventional monetary policies (negative interest rates, large-scale asset purchases, and forward guidance) that carry significant distributive consequences and became intensely politicized. Yet little is known about the mass politics of central banking, or whether contestation over specific instruments threatens central banks' broader legitimacy. We provide evidence from two pre-registered survey experiments in Germany and the Netherlands. A conjoint experiment shows that citizens strongly oppose negative interest rates, the most penalized levels in the design, and are skeptical of unconditional asset purchases. A framing experiment shows support for negative rates responds to both egotropic and sociotropic arguments, with pocketbook concerns resonating most strongly. Exploiting a within-respondent measure of trust in the European Central Bank (ECB), we show that these same frames shift citizens' specific support for the policy without eroding their diffuse trust in the ECB, a highly insulated, technocratic, non-elected institution.