Abstract
This chapter explores political trust in urban China. Even though studies on political trust have proliferated in democracies since the late 1960s, there have been few studies of this issue in authoritarian countries. This is probably due to the fact that it is not easy to obtain an accurate measure of political trust in authoritarian settings where people are afraid of openly expressing their true feelings about the authorities. Difficulties in measuring the level of political trust in authoritarian settings does not mean, however, that the level of political trust cannot be measured or that it is not an important issue in authoritarian countries. The two key questions to be answered in this chapter are: What is the level of political trust among Chinese citizens of their government? and what factors affect their level of political trust?
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Notes
- 1.
See Donald E. Stokes, “Popular Evaluations of Government: An Empirical Assessment,” in Harlan Cleveland and Harold D. Lasswell, eds., Ethics and Bigness: Scientific, Academic, Religious, Political, and Military (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), pp. 61–72.
- 2.
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989).
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David Easton, “A Re-Assessment of the Concept of Political Support,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1975), pp. 435–457.
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In a speech made at a Central Disciplinary Commission meeting, Party General Secretary Xi Jinping once again emphasized the importance of winning people’s trust and stressed that popular support is the key to determining the fate of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. See http://news.163.com/13/0201/10/8MKEV4PD0001124J.html (accessed on February 1, 2013).
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Lianjiang Li, “The Object and Substance of Trust in Central Leaders: Preliminary Evidence from a Pilot Survey,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Seattle, Washington, USA, September 1–4, 2011.
- 10.
See Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People’s Republic China and Taiwan”.
- 11.
World Value Survey 2000, http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org; and Asian Barometer Survey 2002, www.asianbarometer.org.
- 12.
Yang Qing and Wenfang Tang, “Exploring the Sources of Institutional Trust in China: Culture, Mobilization, or Performance?”
- 13.
Lianjiang Li, “The Object and Substance of Trust in Central Leaders: Preliminary Evidence from a Pilot Survey.”
- 14.
It is always a fair question to be asked that whether survey respondents in authoritarian countries give truthful answers. Survey experience in China tells us that if the questions are too sensitive in the Chinese context, it is problematic to judge whether Chinese respondents do indeed give truthful answers. In other words, questions in surveys conducted in China cannot be too sensitive. However, we do not believe that our two statements are too sensitive to be asked in the current relaxed political atmosphere in China. We did not ask, for example, whether or not they trust particular national leaders or local government officials, each of which could be deemed sensitive questions. Several empirical studies on political trust in China have ruled out the fear factor. In addition, the survey was conducted over telephone (instead of face-to-face) in an anonymous fashion in order to ensure the respondents could give truthful answers. Moreover, the respondents were given the options of remaining neutral or refusing to answer the questions if they were reluctant to agree or disagreed with the statements for whatever reason.
- 15.
See Jack Citrin, “Comment: The Political Relevance of Trust in Government,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (1974), pp. 973–998; and Arthur Miller, “Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964–1970,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 68, No. 3 (1974), pp. 951–972.
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William Mishler and Richard Rose, “What Are the Origins of Political Trust? Testing Institutional and Cultural Theories in Post-Communist Societies,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2001), pp. 30–62.
- 17.
Ibid.
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M. Hooghe and D. Stolle, Generating Social Capital: Civil Society and Institutions in a Comparative Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 49–56.
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Maria Bäck and Elina Kestilä, “Social Capital and Political Trust in Finland: An Individual-Level Assessment,” Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (2009), p. 179.
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See E. M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
Thaddeus Coreno, “Fundamentalism as a Class Culture,” Sociology of Religion, Vol. 63, No. 3 (2002), p. 335.
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Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
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Ibid., pp. 390–407.
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Gabriela Catterberg and Alejandro Moreno, “The Individual Bases of Political Trust: Trends in New and Established Democracies,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2005), pp. 31–48.
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Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989).
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See, for example, Verba, Sidney, Norman Nie and Jae-on Kim, The Modes of Democratic Participation: A Cross-national Study (Beverly Hills, CA: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Samuel Huntington and Joan Nelson, No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Arthur Hadley, The Empty Polling Booth (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978); Stephen Bennett, Apathy in America, 1960–1984: Causes and Consequences of Citizen Political Indifference (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers, 1986); and Tom DeLuca, The Two Faces of Political Apathy (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995).
- 30.
See Catterberg and Moreno, 2005.
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Ibid.
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Ibid.
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Morris P. Fiorina, “Economic Retrospective Voting in American National Elections: A Micro-Analysis,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1978), pp. 426–443; Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap: Business, Labor, and Government in the Public Mind. Revised edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Michael B. MacKuen, Robert S. Erikson and James A. Stimson, “Peasants or Bankers? The American Electorate and the US Economy,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 3 (1992), pp. 597–611; and William Mishler and Richard Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust: Testing Institutional and Cultural Theories in Post- Communist Societies,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1 (2001), pp. 30–62.
- 34.
See Edward Diener, Shigeshiro Oishi and Richard E. Lucas, “Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and Life Satisfaction,” in C. R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, eds., Handbook of Positive Psychology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 187–194.
- 35.
John F. Helliwell and Shun Wang, “Trust and Well-Being”, Working Paper No. 15911 (April, 2010), National Bureau of Economic Research (http://www.nber.org/papers/w15911); Wen Chun Chang, “Social Capital and Subjective Happiness in Taiwan,” International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 36, No. 8 (2009), pp. 844–868; and John F. Helliwell and Robert D. Putnam, “The Social Context of Well-Being,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 359, No. 1449 (2004).
- 36.
Rachel Croson and Uri Gneezy, “Gender Differences in Preferences,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2009), pp. 1–27.
- 37.
Ingrid Schoon and Helen Cheng, “Determinants of Political Trust: A Life Time Learning Model,” Developmental Psychology, Vol. 47, No. 3 (2011), pp. 619–631.
- 38.
Tianyuan Li and Helene H. Fung, “Age Differences in Trust: An Investigation Across 38 Countries,” Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences (published online http://psychsocgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/08/08/geronb.gbs072.full, accessed on August 9, 2016).
- 39.
Iryna Johnson, “Political Trust in Societies Under Transformation: A Comparative Analysis of Poland and Ukraine,” International Journal of Sociology, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2005), pp. 63–68.
- 40.
Jian Huang, Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink and Wim Groot, “College Education and Social Trust: An Evidence-Based Study on the Causal Mechanisms,” Social Indicators Research, Vol. 104, No. 2 (2001), pp. 287–310.
- 41.
See Iryna Johnson, “Political Trust in Societies Under Transformation: A Comparative Analysis of Poland and Ukraine.”
- 42.
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Zhong, Y. (2018). Political Trust in Urban China. In: Political Culture and Participation in Urban China. New Perspectives on Chinese Politics and Society. Palgrave, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6268-1_5
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