In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to allow over a million asylum seekers to cross the border into Germany. One key concern at the time was that her decision would signal an open-door policy to aspiring migrants worldwide – thus, increasing migration to Germany in the long-term....

Political trust matters for citizens’ policy preferences but existing research has not yet considered whether this effect depends on how policies are designed. To fill this gap, this article analyses whether and how policy design and political trust interact in shaping people’s policy...