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Fall from Grace:: The Public’s Loss of Faith in Government
... Por otro lado, si bien las explicaciones dadas recaen con bastante fuerza sobre la cuestión del rendimiento, estas son solo una parte de la historia (Inglehart y welzel, 2006a). Algunos como Orren (1997) e Inglehart y welzel (2006) ya afirmaban que, si bien el desempeño político influye en las evaluaciones de la ciudadanía, no debe perderse de vista que el desempeño siempre se evalúa de acuerdo a unos estándares interiorizados. ...
La desafección política ha emergido como un fenómeno central en el panorama político contemporáneo, requiriendo una reevaluación exhaustiva y sistemática. En este contexto, este estudio propone una reconceptualización del término, abordando aspectos teóricos y metodológicos cruciales identificados a través de un análisis exhaustivo de la literatura reciente. Exploramos finalmente cómo las emociones desempeñan un papel fundamental en la configuración de esta actitud, y cómo su comprensión podría arrojar luz sobre la creciente polarización política. Nuestro estudio destaca la necesidad de integrar estas dimensiones emocionales en la medición y análisis de la desafección política, aportando así una visión más completa y matizada de este fenómeno crucial en la ciencia política contemporánea
... Por otro lado, si bien las explicaciones dadas recaen con bastante fuerza sobre la cuestión del rendimiento, estas son solo una parte de la historia (Inglehart y welzel, 2006a). Algunos como Orren (1997) e Inglehart y welzel (2006) ya afirmaban que, si bien el desempeño político influye en las evaluaciones de la ciudadanía, no debe perderse de vista que el desempeño siempre se evalúa de acuerdo a unos estándares interiorizados. ...
La desafección política ha emergido como un fenómeno central en el panorama político contemporáneo, requiriendo una reevaluación exhaustiva y sistemática. En este contexto, este estudio propone una reconceptualización del término, abordando aspectos teóricos y metodológicos cruciales identificados a través de un análisis exhaustivo de la literatura reciente. Exploramos finalmente cómo las emociones desempeñan un papel fundamental en la configuración de esta actitud, y cómo su comprensión podría arrojar luz sobre la creciente polarización política. Nuestro estudio destaca la necesidad de integrar estas dimensiones emocionales en la medición y análisis de la desafección política, aportando así una visión más completa y matizada de este fenómeno crucial en la ciencia política contemporánea
... 19 In other words, political trust constitutes people's perception of how well or poorly their government is performing compared to how they believe it should be performing. 20 Such political institutions include the police, the judiciary, the legislature and the executive, as well as authorities like tax administration institutions and the election management body. Trust in these institutions is contrasted with trust in non-governmental institutions such as private banks, media and religious institutions or leaders, and traditional leaders. ...
Voter abstention (non-voting behavior) is considered one of the symptoms of political distrust. According to empirical studies, both new and established democracies are exhibiting rising or steady non-voting behavior. This behavior poses a threat to representative democracy in general, but it is particularly detrimental to new democracies seeking to consolidate their democracy. While a bulk of studies have investigated the causal relationship and correlation between political trust, voter turnout, and abstention (apathy) in established democracies, little light has been shed on the same in Africa and, to my knowledge, none in Tanzania. Several factors explain this discrepancy, including the relative newness of democracy in Africa and the deficiency of panel data to trace trust and electoral participation levels over time. However, the newness of democracy in Africa necessitates efforts to routinely gauge the functioning of political institutions, the degrees of citizen (dis)trust in them, and their implications for citizens' electoral participation to determine the weaknesses or strengths of such institutions as well as promote citizen participation. Thus, this study contributes to that goal by examining Tanzanians' dis(trust) in political institutions as a significant predictive factor for their propensity to vote as measured by voter turnout. To execute this task, the study utilizes Afrobarometer survey data for Tanzania collected over a ten-year period (2010–2020) and complements it with a review of election reports and relevant documentation. The findings reveal that political distrust is on the rise in Tanzania, contributing partly to high voter abstention in the most recent elections.
This article aims to find the determinants that affect patient satisfaction regarding the Mawiidi public portal in Moroccan public hospitals and assess its outpatient online booking system effectiveness using a model that integrates the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the Information Systems Success Model (ISSM) while adopting a quantitative research methodology. The analysis was conducted using 348 self-administered questionnaires to analyze eight key constructs, such as information quality, patient satisfaction, perceived ease of use, and privacy protection, among others. The results of PLS-SEM verified six out of eleven hypotheses tested, which reflected that information quality has a positive influence on perceived ease of use, which again enhances patient satisfaction. The major factors influencing the satisfaction and trust of patients in online appointment scheduling systems at public hospitals are highlighted. Indeed, privacy protection enhances patient satisfaction and trust. Service quality positively affects satisfaction but to a lesser degree. Website-related anxiety impacts perceived ease of use, although it has a limited influence on satisfaction. Such findings can inform suggestions for the managers of hospitals and portal designers to increase user satisfaction. This study uses a model from the TAM and ISSM frameworks, including cultural and socioeconomic aspects that apply to Morocco’s healthcare context.
Research often finds that immigrants tend to have a different profile from locals regarding confidence in the government. Both the origin's and destination's institutional features can influence immigrants' confidence. Scholars have relied on three major models—the cultural‐persistence model, the performance model, and the dual‐reference model—to explain the possible mechanisms behind this difference. Our research builds on previous studies by expanding the country coverage to explore the heterogeneity in immigrants' confidence. Specifically, we focus on how the level of democracy as an institutional factor is associated with immigrants' confidence. Using integrated datasets from the World Value Survey (WVS, 2017–21) and the European Value Study (EVS, 2017–20) and employing a multilevel model, we confirm that immigrants, on average, tend to have a higher level of confidence in the government. However, their confidence is contingent on institutional performance. In countries with high levels of democracy, the disparity in confidence between immigrants and locals becomes more pronounced. Moreover, the institutional performance in the origin country also influences immigrants' confidence in the government of the destination country. Immigrants constantly compare the institutional performance between the two places. Compared to immigrants from countries with a high level of democracy, immigrants from countries with a lower level of democracy tend to have higher confidence in the destination government. Our results provide support for all three major theoretical models.
A wealth of research emphasizes the importance of citizens’ trust in public institutions. Low social capital has been proven as a substantial factor in decreasing trust in government. As a means of increasing social capital, social media is used by governments to gain citizens’ trust. It is not sufficient though to create accounts on these platforms, and there should be a well-set communication strategy and a systematic mechanism to measure its success. Few studies were conducted to measure government trust in social media considering various trust dimensions. Therefore, an evaluation of the extent of trust in the government on Facebook accounts was undertaken in 2018. In that study, a framework was developed to measure trust comprising six main items: Responsiveness, Accessibility, Transparency, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Participation. The framework was tested on a sample of the Facebook accounts of three Egyptian ministries (chosen based on their direct relation to the country’s economy). After going through two major incidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian-Ukraine war, it became pivotal to reassess trust in the government using the same framework after applying a few adjustments and considering the aspect of government trustworthiness. A comparison between both studies is discussed drawing concluded insights.KeywordsE-governmentICTSocial capitalSocial mediaTrustTrustworthinessFacebook
Given that trust in government is a critical feature of a well-functioning democracy, research into its determinants has long been a priority among public opinion scholars. The consensus in the literature is that short-term factors drive the ebbs and flows of public trust, and a climate of mistrust has significant consequences on the government's ability to deliver on policies and enforce the law. Despite decades of extensive research on public trust, changing circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic support the need to investigate the factors shaping trust in this distinct period. This article, using data from the American National Election Study, explores how economic, social, and political anxieties pervasive throughout the pandemic influence trust in the United States government. Findings from ordered logistic regression analyses indicate that public trust in government is associated with views of the government's COVID-19 response, beliefs about the state of the country and government corruption, economic anxieties, and concerns about election fraud and the status of American democracy. Findings also reveal that sentiments toward institutions—including the police and the Center for Disease Control—contribute to variability in public trust. The implications of these findings for criminal justice research and policy are also considered.
This study looks into citizen satisfaction with service delivery from the perspective of the impact of local legislation reforms come on it. We do so, based on the case of Armenia, a country with a single level of local government where all local authorities, apart from the capital city, are bound by the same law and enjoy similar authorities and responsibilities. Our aim is to understand the extent to which the reform strategy put forward by the government has contributed to increased satisfaction with the services that local authorities provide. The secondary aim is to showcase what aspect of this strategy (i.e., political components or improved service delivery) made a more visible impact on satisfaction.The analysis of citizen satisfaction is based on data from 2015 to 2019 nationwide representative surveys, conducted within the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC) – Armenia “Civic Engagement in Local Governance” (CELoG) Program. Correlation was implemented between the key variables followed by Ordinary Linear Regression. The study concludes that the reform strategy put forward by the government has translated into very marginal, if any, changes in citizens' perceptions and assessment of local service delivery. One could argue that the reforms have changed the citizens' expectations and lack of immediate tangible benefits has negatively impacted their evaluation. One could also make the case for the inertia of improving the quality of services by amalgamated municipalities. The study casts doubt on a large body of literature, disconfirming the impact of environmental factors on satisfaction. Nonetheless, similar to a number of scholars, the study shows that trust and satisfaction are closely related to each other, and that higher satisfaction leads to higher trust. Based on the findings of a previous study, the paper proposes that enhanced administrative autonomy may bring upon a considerable increase in citizens’ satisfaction with services.
Both public administration researchers and practitioners have realized that citizens' satisfaction with and acceptance of urban renewal compensation policy are critical for the local authorities to initiate urban renewal projects. However, little is known about the possible effects of social influence from citi-zens' peers and referents on their satisfaction and acceptance. This research proposes a theoretical model that hypothesizes the relationships among citizens' expectation confirmation, satisfaction and acceptance and introduces perceived distribu-tive justice and subjective norms as representations of social influence. Two rounds of questionnaire surveys with a one-month time lag were conducted to collect data for testing the proposed model. Survey data from 314 citizens involved in different urban renewal compensation modes in China show that citizens' expectation confirmation positively influences citizen satisfaction, which in turn determines the final public acceptance of the policy. The results also highlight the critical roles that perceived distributive justice and subjective norms play in different compensation modes. These findings provide researchers and administrators with theoretical and practical implications.
Open government (OG) has been seen as the act of government facilitating transparency and accommodating citizen and stakeholder engagement for public decision-making. Despite the widespread implementation of open government initiatives, what factors influence open government from a country’s perspective remained unclear. This article investigated socio-technical aspects of open government by looking at five factors: e-government development, freedom of press, innovation capabilities, digital skills, and legal adaptability. This study used secondary data from 137 countries to measure the factors influencing OG globally, employing a multiple regression model. Only digital skills are considered less influential in open government initiatives among all the five factors.
The State You See uncovers a racial gap in the way the American government appears in people’s lives. It makes it clear that public policy changes over the last fifty years have driven all Americans to distrust the government that they see in their lives, even though Americans of different races are not seeing the same kind of government. For white people, these policy changes have involved a rising number of generous benefits submerged within America’s tax code, which taken together cost the government more than Social Security and Medicare combined. Political attention focused on this has helped make welfare and taxes more visible representations of government for white Americans. As a result, white people are left with the misperception that government does nothing for them, apart from take their tax money to spend on welfare. Distrust of government is the result. For people of color, distrust is also rampant but for different reasons. Over the last fifty years, America has witnessed increasingly overbearing policing and swelling incarceration numbers. These changes have disproportionately impacted communities of color, helping to make the criminal legal system a unique visible manifestation of government in these communities. While distrust of government emerges in both cases, these different roots lead to different consequences. White people are mobilized into politics by their distrust, feeling that they must speak up in order to reclaim their misspent tax dollars. In contrast, people of color are pushed away from government due to a belief that engaging in American elections will yield the same kind of unresponsiveness and violence that comes from interactions with the police. The result is a perpetuation of the same kind of racial inequality that has always been present in American democracy. The State You See is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the American government engages in subtle forms of discrimination and how it continues to uphold racial inequality in the present day.
Information plays a formative role in citizens’ decision to trust their government. Given an increasingly diverse information environment, which is attributable to the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT)s, the Internet, and social media, we hypothesize that citizens’ use of a particular medium for information (online vs offline, and government source vs. non-government source) about their government plays an important and distinctive role in shaping citizens’ satisfaction with government information provision and trust in government. To address this central hypothesis, we analyze data from the 3068 citizen respondents. The findings of our study reveal that citizens’ use of the online medium for information about their government, such as information from local government web-media, lacks a strong relationship with their levels of satisfaction with government information provision and trust in government, while citizens’ use of different sources on the offline medium for information about their government, such as information from local government meeting or official gazette, is found to have a stronger association with citizens’ trust in government and satisfaction with government information provision.
We explore period, cohort and age effects on political engagement of Swiss residents from 1999 to 2020. A particular focus lies on the impact of the successive crises democratic societies have faced in recent years, such as the economic and debt crisis, refugee crisis, climate change, terrorist attacks or COVID-19 pandemic. We review the literature on the potential of such large-scale external events for both politicization and depoliticization. We then draw several hypotheses, which we test empirically. We consider several dimensions of political engagement (interest in politics, party identification, participation in popular votes, political discussions, and political trust), and seek to explain their variation over time, using data from the Swiss Household Panel. Our results suggest that “troubled times” have little effect on political engagement overall, but that crises stimulate political discussions and trust in government in the short term. We further find increasing levels of political trust in the longer run, which might reflect a cumulative effect of the various crises. In contrast, we find steadily declining levels of traditional forms of political engagement, namely party identification and participation in popular votes, as well as interest in politics. For cohorts, we find a U-shaped association between generations and political engagement. An exception to this pattern is political trust, where we observe a small but steady increase from older to newer generations. For age, we observed a monotonic increase of political engagement with age for all indicators. Again, trust in government somewhat deviates from other forms of political engagement, as it first decreases in the younger age groups and then increases from the age of 40 onwards. In conclusion, we discuss some implications of these complex patterns of results for the future of democratic systems.
China provides a critical case for how social connections affect political trust because of the unique guanxi networks and the symbiosis between the state and non-governmental associations. Based on survey data from urban China, findings from both standard models and auxiliary IV analysis propose that: (1) informal social ties impair political trust since guanxi networking offers provisional publics for the transmission of political stimuli; (2) formal social ties foster political trust because associations and the state coexist in a state-dominant symbiotic sphere that brings about political trust assimilations by helping associations realize their agendas and interests.
In East Asia, where a culture of submission to authority dominates, parental expectations significantly influence children’s career choices. A recent empirical study conducted in Taiwan shows that children are more inclined to pursue a public service career when influenced by their parents’ expectations. The present study asks two questions: why do parents in East Asia expect children to secure a career in public service? Is it a result of social pressure, parents’ own values, their socio-economic status, or all of these possible reasons? The present study uses data collected in Taiwan to answer these questions. Our findings broaden the current knowledge base of parental socialisation and its effect on children’s preference for public sector careers.
The gap between trust in central and local governments remains an unsolved puzzle in social sciences. Based on existing theoretical frameworks and our analyses of the Asian Barometer Survey data (2001–2016), we found three types of trust gaps in Asian societies: equal trust, paradoxical trust, and hierarchical trust. We speculated the differences could be explained by macro-level political freedom and individual-level predictors such as how people consume political news. Multilevel analyses revealed the political freedom of a society is a critical predictor of the trust gap: people from politically unfree societies tend to trust their central governments the most. Furthermore, freedom and frequency of news consumption interact in shaping political trust: in free societies, people who follow news frequently have less political trust; in unfree societies, the opposite is true, suggesting media propaganda plays a role in shaping political trust. This study helps to explain authoritarian resilience in East and Southeast Asia.
As the scale and schedule of installing solar power generation equipment are accelerated by Taiwan’s government to respond to the global climate policy, more effective policy measures are required by the Bureau of Energy to attract private funds to invest in solar power. In order to search for effective policy measures, this study developed a research scale to explore the determinants of Taiwan’s institutions/ corporations investment in solar power generation equipment. The results of this study show that the benefits and costs in the market environment directly affect the behavioral intentions of the institutions/corporations regarding the installation of solar power generation equipment in Taiwan. “Land use,” “equipment certification and inspection,” and “an infrastructure of renewable energy” are three factors that indirectly affect the installation of solar power generation equipment through public trust, government satisfaction, and governmental policies.
Zusammenfassung
Am 3. November 2020 wurde der amerikanische Präsidenten Donald Trump deutlich abgewählt. Dieser behauptete jedoch ohne konkrete Beweise vorzulegen, die Wahl sei gefälscht gewesen und konnte Millionen seiner Wähler und einen Großteil der Republikaner damit überzeugen. Sein Versuch, Joseph Biden die Wahl zu stehlen, scheiterte mit dem Sturm seiner Anhänger auf das Kapitol. Während die Erleichterung weltweit groß ist, dass mit Joseph Biden ein Präsident regiert, der wieder Normalität, Professionalität und Verantwortungsbewusstsein in die amerikanische Politik bringen wird, bleibt die Sorge groß, dass die von Trump aufgeheizte Stimmung anhalten und die Politik in den USA vergiften wird.
This study investigated the effects of social determinants and resource distribution on trust in government after a disaster. This involved an analysis of four waves of the Social Impact and Recovery Survey of Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan. The statistical method adopted was the latent process mixed model for multivariate longitudinal outcomes. Trust scores were assigned to four levels of government, and social determinants were chosen to represent resource distribution in predisaster situations. This study also included resource distribution after the disaster. The results indicated that ethnicity was a more prominent issue than education and income. Regarding resource distribution after a disaster, resource gain and resource loss were both significant in shaping trust in government. The results also suggested that over the long term, resource gain more greatly affected trust in government than resource loss. Additionally, resource loss was crucial for the government at more local levels in gaining people's trust. This study recommends that a postdisaster model of trust in government must prioritize resource distribution both before and after a disaster.
There is much interest in the application of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the quality, performance, and responsiveness of public sector Institutions thereby potentially Improving trust. However, there is little empirical evidence about the interaction of ICT Implementations on institutional trust of the public sector. This article extends our understanding of the interplay of ICTs in the public sector and Institutional trust through an in-depth comparative case-study of two successful Chilean e-servlces. The article begins by developing a relational conception of institutional trust of which Institutional trustworthiness is a component of that relationship. It then analyses the two cases separately with respect to three dimensions of institutional trustworthiness: good performance, aligned incentives, and the values of fairness and distributive justice. Following this, a comparative analysis of the two cases shows that while the implementation of technology may bring anticipated efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency gains, there are fundamental limitations to improving institutional trustworthiness through technological interventions. In particular, where points of discretion and ambiguity remain, or power asymmetries are exacerbated, trustworthiness is challenged. Furthermore, drawing on the cases and the relational conception of institutional trust, the article argues that enhancing trustworthiness is a constrained optimisation problem in an environment of competing and often conflicting values.
This study provides a nuanced and interactive analysis of institutional confidence in government. It investigates the drivers of institutional confidence by differentiating them into outcome-based and performance-based modes and examining the interaction between the two modes in influencing confidence levels. Drawing on survey data obtained from three Chinese cities, this study extends the two-dimensional analytical framework to examine public confidence in the government’s control of corruption. The study has the dual purpose of analyzing how citizens differ in their confidence in the government’s anti-corruption efforts and what factors influence their views. The findings indicate that citizens’ confidence in government control of corruption is affected by their perceptions of the level of existing corruption and by the extent to which they are satisfied with their government’s anti-corruption efforts. The findings also reveal that the public’s positive perceptions of anti-corruption performance moderate the negative impact that their perception of corruption has on their confidence in government control of corruption.
While declining political trust has been given much attention, the behavioural implications of declining political trust have not yet been investigated extensively and the literature also shows the varying effects of political trust on support for extreme and populist parties across contexts. This article focuses on the decline of political trust in Australia from 1998 to 2016 and its effect on Australian voting behaviour. Multinomial logit estimations are performed using individual-level survey data from seven Australian federal elections. Our study provides evidence that political distrust can unite all successful right-wing populist parties and act as a moderating source to raise votes for right-wing populist parties in the elections. The study further demonstrates that right-wing populist parties can experience electoral success beyond mobilising anti-immigration sentiments.
Are the origins of trust in state government different from the reasons why people trust the national government? I argue that trust in state government has distinctive origins, tied to differences in how states operate within a federal system of government. Leveraging variations in the character of the states, I consider whether trust in state government is a function of its proximity to citizens, people’s relative preferences for smaller government, and the homogeneity of state electorates. Using responses to the 2017 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I show feelings of trust in state government follow not only from state political conditions and economic performance but also from the distinctive character of the states. These findings challenge prior accounts that argue that diffuse trust in state government reflects only how people feel about the national government, and highlight how large states and small states face different challenges in cultivating trust in state government.
Does political distrust generate a desire to engage in the political process or does it foster demobilization? Utilizing a theoretical framework rooted in government experiences and a mixed-methods research design, this article highlights the racially contingent meaning of political distrust to show that both relationships exist. For Whites, distrust is tied to a perception of tax dollars being poorly spent, leading to increased political involvement as Whites to try to gain control over “their” investment in government. For People of Color, distrust of government is grounded in a fear of the criminal justice system, and thus drives disengagement by motivating a desire for invisibility in relation to the state. Ultimately, this finding highlights a previously unseen racial heterogeneity in the political consequences of distrust. Further, it demonstrates how the state perpetuates racially patterned political inequality in a time when many of the formal laws engendering this dynamic have fallen away.
Many indicators suggest that the level of gender equity is low in Korea. According to the psychological‐democratic contract theory, because gender inequality calls into question the capacity of government, when citizens perceive low levels of gender equity, they are not likely to trust in government. Despite the importance, relatively little attention is paid to the ramifications of gender equity on trust in government. To fill the void, the objective of this article was to identify the extent to which gender equity affects trust in government. The key findings of the 2009 Korean General Social Survey are as follows: (a) Gender equity positively affects trust in government; (b) Gender equity has a larger effect on female citizen trust in government than male citizen trust in government; and (c) gender equity is more strongly associated with trust in the Supreme Court than other government branches.
Objectives
We evaluate whether citizens’ trust in Congress is influenced by perceptions of ideological distance between themselves and their representatives. We argue that citizens view members as the “face” of Congress, and thus trust the institution more when the face of that institution is more ideologically proximal to themselves.
Methods
We test our hypotheses using responses to survey questions regarding both trust in Congress and perceptions of ideological distance between respondents and members of Congress in the 2008 and 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We then pair these observational survey data with a survey experiment administered by Qualtrics in 2016.
Results
Ordinal logistic regressions from our survey data evince strong empirical support for our arguments, showing that as perceived ideological distance between a respondent and her member of Congress increases, trust in Congress as a whole declines. These observational analyses are corroborated by our survey experiment, which again shows that as perceptions of ideological distance increase, trust in legislatures declines.
Conclusions
Our results suggest that a lack of faith in legislative institutions is often the result of a failure of representation. One way to restore Americans’ trust in Congress is for members to demonstrate more fidelity to the ideological leanings of their constituents.
Political confidence establishes a cornerstone of any stable democratic system, as it enhances both the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic governance. In recent years, however, growing and recurring concerns about low and decreasing levels of political confidence have been echoed among numerous scholars, politicians, and journalists alike. While some are skeptical about the implications of political confidence for the viability of modern democracies, others have labeled this situation a crisis, a malaise, or even a breakdown. In the introductory chapter of his book, Schnaudt argues that most of what is known about the levels, developments, and consequences of political confidence may be incomplete or even misleading. According to the author, research on political confidence is characterized by a restricted and unwarranted focus on representative institutions and authorities and a concomitant neglect of citizens’ confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. In order to arrive at a thorough and encompassing empirical picture about the relevance of political confidence for the functioning and well-being of contemporary democracies, the author makes a case for analyzing the distinctiveness, antecedents, and consequences of citizens’ confidence in both representative and regulative institutions and authorities. In doing so, Schnaudt challenges the predominant usage of so-called one-dimensional conceptions of political confidence that obscure important qualitative differences between citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities. The introductory chapter outlines the major research problems and challenges in detail, presents the research questions and strategy pursued throughout the book, and concludes with a discussion of the data basis used for the empirical analysis.
What are the respective antecedents of individual citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities? In the third chapter of his book, Schnaudt analyzes whether the sources of citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities are the same or rather different ones. For this purpose, the author relies on the most widely used explanations of political confidence in the literature—namely social capital, institutional-performance evaluations, and political involvement—and examines their respective relevance and explanatory power with regard to a one-dimensional and a two-dimensional conception as well as a typology of political confidence. Using the same group of explanatory accounts for different conceptions and types of political confidence, Schnaudt is able to determine whether one and the same set of antecedents is related differently to citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities. In his empirical analysis based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the author shows that different facets of social capital, institutional-performance evaluations, and political involvement exert a varying influence on citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities, respectively. The chapter’s main conclusion is that citizens’ decision to place confidence in representative institutions and authorities depends on a different set of factors than their corresponding decision to place confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. According to the author, it is therefore clearly misleading to assume that political confidence is a coherent, one-dimensional syndrome that emanates from one identical pool of antecedents.
This study conceptualizes anti-government sentiment and tests the relationships between anti-government sentiment and three antecedents (i.e., ethics failure, compassionate leadership, and communication strategy). An online survey (n=1,112) was conducted in South Korea. Exploratory factor analysis with principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted on the measures proposed for anti-government sentiment. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Results show that publics’ perceptions of the government’s ethics failure, lack of compassionate leadership, and use of a buffering strategy for communication are positively related to their anti-government sentiment toward the incumbent government.
In 1917 Congress passed the Trading with the Enemy Act to prevent trade with Germany and the Central Powers. It was a wartime law designed for wartime conditions but one that, over the course of the following century, took on a secret, surprising life of its own. Eventually it became the basis for a project of worldwide economic sanctions applied by the United States at the discretion of the president during times of both war and peace. This article traces the history of the law in order to explore how the expansion of American power in the twentieth century required a transformation of the American state and the extensive use of executive powers justified by repeated declarations of national emergency.
Since the late 1980s, performance management has become a bon ton in central and local government research and practice. Its emergence is largely a result of neo-liberal ideas and the reforms of New Public Management. The goal of this study is to examine the relationship between performance management at the local level and citizens’ satisfaction with and trust in government. By using data collected by Israeli local authorities over recent years, several questions were answered. Have years of performance management initiatives been effective in terms of good governance? What relationship do they have with citizens as service recipients? What are the implications of this experience for future reforms in public administration? Three data sets were used concerning (1) citizens’ satisfaction with and trust in government, (2) the experiences of senior local government officers with performance management initiatives, and (3) the objective characteristics of the local government authorities. Results indicate that performance management is associated with higher levels of citizens’ trust in and satisfaction with local government. Furthermore, the community’s socioeconomic status moderates the mediated relationship between performance management and the satisfaction and trust of citizens. Implications of these findings are discussed, and suggestions for future studies are recommended.
The influence of corruption convictions on government trust is complicated. On one hand, they may reflect the severity of corruption in a jurisdiction. On the other hand, they might indicate the degree of anticorruption efforts. Existing literature has suggested the severity of corruption’s negative effects and the positive effect of anticorruption efforts on institutional trust. This research synthesized existing studies, identified the intellectual puzzle in the literature, and developed open hypotheses to investigate the way in which corruption convictions systematically affect citizens’ trust in government. State-level panel data merged from different sources were used for the empirical analyses. The results showed a positive influence of corruption convictions on public trust in government.
Citizen trust in government at the macro level has been studied by public administration scholars for many years. To further our understanding, assessing trust at the meso level of government organizations is important to more precisely determine effects and antecedents of trust at the organizational level. The organizational trust literature has shown that organizational trustworthiness is multidimensional, but the extant literature has not validated such measures in a public administration context. The proposed scale builds on and adapts an existing organizational trust scale to a public administration context. The ‘Citizen Trust in Government Organizations’ scale is validated using data from two different samples (total n = 991), resulting in a scale of nine items measuring three dimensions : perceived competence, benevolence, and integrity. This scale can be used by other researchers and is valuable to gain a more specific and multi-dimensional understanding of trust in government organizations.
Points for practitioners
A major problem for government organizations worldwide is the lack of perceived trustworthiness by the public. To tackle this problem, a way to measure it is needed, but at the moment there are only generic measures to assert perceived trustworthiness in a government organization. This article presents a first validation and incorporates three dimensions : perceived competence, benevolence, and honesty. Practitioners can use this scale and adapt to their relevant local context to identify specific trustworthiness problems.
We argue that citizens’ trust attitudes are inversely related to party polarization because polarization tends to encourage political conflict, which most people dislike. We further posit that partisans trust attitudes are driven by the ideological extremity of the opposing and their own parties for similar reasons. Using roll-call-based estimates of state legislative party polarization and public opinion data collected in 2008, we show strong evidence in favor of our theory: higher levels of party polarization within legislative chambers depresses citizens’ trust in their legislatures. Among partisans, we also find that trust attitudes respond to the ideological extremity of the opposing party but not to a citizen’s own party’s extremity. We further find that as citizens’ interest in politics increases, they react more strongly to polarization when forming their trust attitudes. Finally, partisans become less responsive to the ideological extremity of the opposing party as they become more politically interested.
A great deal of research has documented and sought to explain American's discontent toward politics. Although most of this research is dedicated to understanding the determinants of the National Election Study's (NES) Trust in Government index, relatively less is known about the willingness of citizens to support institutional changes to their status quo political system. This research relies on social psychological theories of procedural justice to understand how perceptions of the distributive and procedural aspects of government shape both support for institutional changes in the broader U.S. political system and shorter-term trust in government evaluations. Analysis of a unique set of open-ended responses to the National Election Survey demonstrates that support for institutional and system level changes is mostly a function of economic perceptions and the belief that politicians are unresponsive to the public rather than any short-term dissatisfaction with policy outcomes. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates that although the desire for institutional changes in the political system and trust in government are shaped by similar perceptions toward the economy and representation, there remains some distinct variation in the desire for system level changes and trust in government.
This study analyzes how citizens' satisfaction with governance values and perceived government performance affect public trust in government in China and South Korea and explores its implications for building resilient communities. The results of the study show that the level of satisfaction with democratic governance values and the government's performance in dealing with political corruption, the economy, and human rights are all significantly associated with trust in government in China. Government performance in dealing with political corruption and the economy is significantly associated with trust in government in South Korea as well. Government officials' attention to citizen input is significantly associated with trust in local government in both countries. Trust in people was significantly associated with trust in government in China only. Finally, implications of the study findings for building resilient communities and future research agendas are discussed. 本研究分析了中国和韩国公民对治理价值的满意度和感知的政府绩效如何影响他们对政府的信任，并探讨其对构建有韧性的社区的启示。研究结果显示，中国民众对民主治理价值和政府治理政治腐败、经济发展和人权保护方面绩效的满意水平，都同政府信任显著相关。韩国政府在治理政治腐败和经济方面的表现，也同政府信任显著相关。政府官员对民意的关注同两国地方政府信任显著相关。人与人之间的信任只在中国同政府信任显著相关。最后，本文讨论了本研究发现对构建有韧性的社区的启示，以及未来研究议程。 본 연구는 중국과 한국 시민의 거버넌스 가치에 대한 만족도와 정부 성과에 관한 인식이 정부 신뢰에 미치는 영향을 분석하고 그것이 회복력 있는 공동체 건설에 가지는 함의를 탐색하였다. 본 연구 결과에 따르면 중국 정부의 부패, 경제 그리고 인권에 관한 성과와 민주적 거버넌스 가치에 관한 만족도가 정부 신뢰와 유의미한 관련성을 가지는 것으로 나타났다. 한국 정부의 부패와 경제에 관한 성과 또한 정부 신뢰와 유의미한 관련성이 있음을 확인하였다. 중국과 한국 양국 공무원의 시민 의견에 관한 관심은 지방 정부에 관한 신뢰와 유의미한 관련성을 가지는 것으로 나타났다. 국민에 대한 신뢰는 중국 정부 신뢰에만 유의미한 관련성을 확인하였다. 이로써 본 연구는 회복력 있는 공동체 건설에 가지는 함의와 향후 연구 어젠다를 논의하였다.
This research note follows up a study of the immediate impact of an October 2000 coal waste disaster on social trust, community attachment, and risk perception in Martin County, Kentucky. This research study explores whether the negative social impacts of the October 2000 disaster in Martin County have persisted in the longer term. Specifically, it analyzes two waves of survey data Martin County (2001 and 2011) and Perry County, Kentucky (2001 and 2013), which served as the comparison or ‘control’ in the original study. This study finds that even though the disaster-stricken county's trust levels have not rebounded to the level of the ‘control’ case, levels of trust in the directly impacted community have increased significantly over the ten-year time period. Trust levels in the non-impacted area have not increased, with the exception of trust in corporations, which increased in both communities.
South Korea has the highest expenditure on telecommunications among OECD countries, drawing national attention to the issue of reducing high prices. In response, the Korean government enacted the Mobile Device Distribution Improvement (MDDI) Act to eliminate information asymmetry by limiting mobile carriers’ mobile handset subsidies to consumers. This study examined factors affecting public trust in the MDDI based by analyzing responses to a questionnaire survey using the ordered probit model. The results show that the knowledge, expectations, and perceived effects of the MDDI have a meaningful effect on public trust in the policy. The results of this study confirm that it is essential for governments to promote their policies by continuously educating the public, especially in this case because the policy has a direct effect on telecommunications expenditures.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to adapt the research conducted on subclinical psychopaths in the private sector and applies it to the public sector to build a conceptual frame for further research on subclinical psychopaths in public organisations. General characteristics of entrepreneurs often run counter to democratic values, and are more often aligned with private sector values. Public managers who display one of the dark-triad personalities, i.e., psychopathy, can pose a greater threat to democratic values and the state.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach of this paper is theoretical with the aim of proposing a conceptual framework that utilises Downs’ five types of officials governing bureaucracies, to illustrate a relationship between public entrepreneurs and subclinical psychopaths.
Findings
The conceptual framework presented in this paper suggests that psychopathic entrepreneurs can be identified within Downs’ bureaucratic framework specifically as climbers (due to inherent personality traits) and as zealots (heroic and altruistic behaviour for organisational causes, yet motivated by power, domination, and self-interest). The implications of psychopathic public managers who engage in entrepreneurial activities may be escalating public distrust, hostility, and dissatisfaction in government.
Originality/value
This theoretical paper adds to the growing body of criticism for public entrepreneurship by conceptualising how psychopaths, as climbers and zealots, affect public trust in terms of accountability and democratic values.
Despite their responsibility for federal policy implementation in the United States, little research has focused on how presidential nominees and appointees affect public opinion. This study offers the first systematic examination of this overlooked phenomenon. Using a survey with an embedded experimental manipulation, we find that perceived nominee competence is associated with increased trust in government in general, whereas perceptions of favoritism or patronage—characterized here as the nomination of campaign fundraisers—are associated with decreased levels of trust in the same. Notably, perceived nominee ideology has no perceptible effect on trust in government.
Trust is a blessing. As an ideal that leads us to believe that people who are different from us are part of our moral community, trust makes us more willing to deal with people who are different from ourselves and holds us to high standards of honesty and fairness. Trust provides the foundation for a rule of law and for policies that benefit the less fortunate.
For the public sector to function at all, there must be some degree of public trust in its ability to function and achieve the goals for which it was established. As early as the 1700s Benjamin Franklin pointed out that “Much of the strength and efficiency of any government, in procuring & securing happiness to the people, depends on ... the general opinion of the goodness of that government.”1 In 1988 Buchanan and Brennan argued that the basic public choice premise that government action is motivated primarily by private interest, might well serve to undermine public trust in government and reduce its effectiveness. In concluding their argument they posed a key question, “Is public choice immoral?” and responded that (1988, p. 184):
Even if the explanatory power of public choice models of politics is acknowledged, the moral spillovers of such models on the behavior of political actors may be deemed to be so important as to negate any purely “scientific” advance made in our understanding of how politics actually works. The maintenance of the standards of public life, it could be argued, may require a heroic vision of the “statesman” or “public servant,” because only by holding such a vision can the possibility of public-interested behavior on the part of political agents be increased.
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A key component in the exchange relationship between government and business in modern liberal democracies is the level of public trust that each institution enjoys. However, trust does not affect both equally. A fall in trust for government is likely to diminish a government’s policy discretion much more than an equivalent fall in trust for business will diminish a business actor’s capacity to make profit or shape public policy. In addition, there are good reasons to believe that government will tend to find it more difficult than business to maintain trust from its stakeholders, or to recover it when lost. In this paper, I insert a role for public trust dynamics into Lindblom’s theory of the structural power of business. I then return to the debate in this journal on business power and the 2010 Australian mining tax I show that the existing accounts omit the role of trust in the conflict and as a result “discover” much more incompetence from the Australian government than really existed.
Approaches to understanding trust in government are likely to be incomplete if they are only applied to trust and not government as well. As such, this study builds upon existing attempts to understand trust in government by deconstructing the terms trust and government and assessing the relationships among the various components within South Korea. To analyse the antecedents of trust in government, multiple regression analyses are used to assess The Social Trust Public Opinion Survey (2004), which addresses current trust levels across society, markets, institutions, and government. Our findings suggest the significance of determinants of trust vary by area of government.
Governmental transparency is a highly regarded value, often studied by academics and emphasized by practitioners. In literature, transparency is discussed as a tool for enhancing the accountability of governments, as a principle to be implemented in order to reduce corruption in public administration, and as a means for making information on government performance more readily available. This chapter drafts a framework aimed at measuring the degree of governmental transparency and interactivity based on the multiple dimensions of information published on the institutional websites of municipalities. The framework has been tested on a purposive sample composed of the 21 municipalities in Italy's regional capital cities. The results show that they primarily display information about what they do, how they use resources, whereas acknowledgement of government performance with regard to service delivery is still scarce.
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