Local–national political trust patterns: Why China is an exception
| Author | Cary Wu,Rima Wilkes |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512116677587 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512116677587
International Political Science Review
2018, Vol. 39(4) 436 –454
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512116677587
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Local–national political trust
patterns: Why China is
an exception
Cary Wu
University of British Columbia, Canada
Rima Wilkes
University of British Columbia, Canada
Abstract
Is political trust in China anomalous? In most countries there are systematic differences in the level of trust in
national and local government that take one of three patterns. In some countries, individuals trust the national
government more than local government (hierarchical trust); in others individuals trust local government
more than national government; while in some countries individuals trust both levels of government equally.
Of 11 Asian societies, the only country where hierarchical trust predominates is China. Elsewhere the norm
is to put more trust in local levels of government. While previous studies have described the pattern of trust
in China, no study has considered relative trust as an outcome or comparatively. Taking advantage of the
2006 and 2010 Asian Barometer Survey data we consider whether the hierarchical trust pattern in China
is the result of political control, culture, and/or performance. We find that political control explains the
hierarchical trust pattern in China.
Keywords
Local–national trust patterns, political trust, China
Introduction
In The Analects of Confucius, the disciple Tsze-kung asked Confucius about government where-
upon Confucius replied that ‘the requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food,
sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler…. If the people
have no faith in their rulers there is no standing for the state’ (Confucius, 2010: part 12). Soon after
Corresponding author:
Cary Wu, Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, 6303 NW Marine Dr., Vancouver, V6T 1Z1,
Canada.
Email: carywooruc@gmail.com
677587IPS0010.1177/0192512116677587International Political Science ReviewWu and Wilkes
research-article2017
Article
Wu and Wilkes 437
in Europe, Thucydides made a similar point about political trust, writing that without citizen sup-
port, good laws are no better than bad ones that are never changed (Thucydides, 1988). As Mara
(2001: 823) notes, for Thucydides and other classical scholars, political trust is an essential ingredi-
ent of a vibrant and healthy political life. More recent scholarship also asserts that political trust
matters – leading to more efficient social, economic, and political relationships (Hetherington and
Husser, 2012) and facilitating civic and political engagement (Catterberg and Moreno, 2006).
The principal aim of this article is to contribute to conceptual and empirical work on relative
political trust. In the predominant approach, political trust, which is the belief that government
leaders and institutions serve the people’s interest, is conceptualized additively (Li, 2004; Shi,
2014). Typically political trust is operationalized via an index where respondents are given a series
of questions about different political institutions that are then summed to denote their overall level
of political trust (Catterberg and Moreno, 2006, Wong et al., 2011). While this additive approach
gauges general levels of trust averaged across any given set of institutions, it overlooks important
differences in trust levels across institutions or levels of government. As Klüwer and Waaler (2006:
158) state, ‘a subject trusts a variety of entities, but with different degrees of confidence.’ The kinds
of relative judgements citizens make about these different levels of government are important
because they reflect an active and critical political citizenry.
We build on work on relative political trust by considering why China has a different distribu-
tion of relative political trust than other Asian societies. In most Asian societies the majority of citi-
zens are more trusting of local government and are less trusting of national government; the
exception is China where the vast majority of citizens are more trusting of national government and
are less trusting of local government (Li, 2004, 2013, 2016; Saich, 2007). This pattern is called
hierarchical trust. What can account for the predominance of this pattern in China compared to
other Asian societies? To answer this question, we use the 2006 and 2010 Asian Barometer Survey
data and consider the impact of political control, performance, and culture in China compared to
other Asian societies. In so doing, this article refines theoretical work on relative trust patterns and
also provides the first study to consider multiple relative political trust patterns as an outcome and
to do so in comparative perspective. We demonstrate that, in China, the predominance of the hier-
archical trust pattern is reflective of the effects of political control.
Relative political trust patterns in comparative perspective
One of the major developments to follow the publication of Easton’s (1965) A Systems Analysis of
Political Life was greater attention to the objects of political support. While Easton focused on
whether the object of political trust/support was the authorities or the regime, many others have
considered different levels of government as objects of trust. In Europe, Newton and Norris (2000),
for example, consider confidence in different public governmental institutions such as the civil
service, Parliament and the armed forces. Turning to Asia, Kim (2010) focuses on the determinants
of trust in local and central government in Japan and South Korea. These and other studies of this
kind have clearly demonstrated the extent to which trust varies across institutions.
The issue of consequence addressed in this paper is that, not only are there differences across
institutions in the level of trust, but these differences exhibit distinct patterns. In the United
States citizens see ‘government officials who are far away as lazy, incompetent, and probably
dishonest’, but they do not apply this thinking to the local level where they still ‘trust and even
revere those government officials who are near at hand’ (Frederickson and Frederickson, 1995:
165–168). This pattern runs contrary to expectations: citizens should either trust or distrust gov-
ernment on all levels or according to performance. More recent studies confirm this pattern:
Americans have higher trust and confidence in specific institutions and the bureaucrats whom
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