The effects of executive constraints on political trust

This article explores political trust, delving into its subcomponents and the relationship between them. It is interested in explaining why governmental trust and trust in regulative state institutions are similar in some countries and different in others. It argues that the variation can best be explained by checks on the executive. This is the case because the more restricted the executive, the less regulative state institutions are affected by the fluctuations in governmental trust. When the government cannot encroach upon state institutions, the impartiality and efficacy of regulative institutions are maintained. The less governmental interference to regulative state institutions, the more such institutions will be devoted to the public rather than partisan interests, resulting in a wider gap between state and government trust. The argument is tested through an empirical analysis of a cross-national panel data based on all existing waves of the World Values Survey.     

Japan's political trust deficit

Abstract

This introductory article to the special issue on ‘Trust and Mistrust in Contemporary Japan’ lays out key trust concepts used in social science research. It then turns towards the Japanese case, summarizing important research on the notion of trust and Japanese politics and society, according to which trust levels are comparatively low. The subsequent part provides an overview on the case studies that scrutinize issues related to political trust in particular. As the contributions invariably point to low levels of political trust, we finally reflect on problems in Japan's politics in relation to the notion of trust.     

Modelling trust and contractual arrangements in a local economy

This article investigates trust among dairy value-chain actors to understand the innovative process in a local productive sector in Tunisia. It uses a sample of 45 smallholder farmers chosen randomly nearby existing collection centres in the region. A trust variable is constructed employing 11 ordinal variables based on principal component analysis, and institutional arrangements then modelled to examine the effect of trust on contracting decisions and cooperative membership. The results show that trust is defined by values such as “integrity”, “competence”, and “existence of credible information”, which are preconditions to sustainable contracts. The article contributes to the growing literature which considers social capital, networking and trust as determinants of farmer’s behaviour, as opposed to the classical model of rationality.     

Public confidence in the judiciary: the interaction between political awareness and level of democracy

Apart from the studies that focus on public attitudes toward higher courts in advanced democracies, we know little about the factors that can explain public confidence in the judiciary in a comparative setting. In this regard, the goal of this study is to explain whether, and to what extent, the country's level of democracy moderates the impact of political awareness on public confidence in the judiciary. This study uses hierarchical linear models to analyse the interaction between individual and country level factors by using the World Values Survey (2005–2009) data for 49 countries and various other data sources. Our empirical results show that in advanced democracies political awareness variables like education and political participation have a positive impact on public confidence in the judiciary, whereas in countries with weak levels of democracy higher political awareness leads to increased cynicism about the judiciary. These results suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach to explain confidence in the judiciary is not possible when we are dealing with a wide range of societies that vary in terms of many characteristics, both institutional and cultural.     

Terrorism and trust in Northern Ireland

While terrorism produces certainty that the ‘other’ intends to do harm, and chronic uncertainty about the potential for terrorist attack, trust requires the negotiation of uncertainty. This paper begins with a review of the existing literature on trust and terrorism, as a point of departure for analysing the usefulness of thinking about trust as the negotiation of uncertainty. The four substantive sections that follow examine the 1981 Hunger strikes, the beginnings of political dialogue, the construction of cross-border institutions, and the potential for developing emotional trust in the Northern Irish context. In each of the areas, the development of a rudimentary trust has hinged on the destabilisation of mutually exclusive identity categories, defined in conflictual opposition to the ‘other’, and the opening of a space for the construction of multiple and overlapping identities and the negotiation between them.     

Demand for democracy in resilient authoritarianism: evidence from rural China

This article investigates the sources of public demand for democratic institutions under authoritarian rule. While a growing body of literature recognizes that in authoritarian polities such as China, economic development does not lead to democratization in a linear fashion, our understanding of the sources of democratization in resilient authoritarianism remains limited. This article provides an empirical test of the three most compelling theories to subsequently emerge: modernization theory, social capital theory, and institutional theory. The results of a survey conducted in the countryside of Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces provide support for the institutional approach in understanding public demand for democracy in rural China, while the modernization theory and social capital theory are shown to be less useful. Specifically, results show that people working in the government system are core supporters of the regime, whereas income, education attainment, social trust, and one’s satisfaction with regime institutions turn out to be irrelevant and do not serve as direct sources of public demand for democracy. These results extend our understanding of the complex interaction between an authoritarian regime and its people, shedding new light on the democratic prospects for resilient authoritarianism.     

The trust deficit in Sino-Japanese relations

Abstract

Recent years have seen a deterioration in political relations between China and Japan, in particular over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and history-related problems. Commentators have noted an attendant decline in trust between the two sides and have stressed the need for confidence-building measures in order to address the trust deficit. This article explores the origins of declining trust between the Chinese and Japanese leaderships. It argues that attempts to build a friendly and trusting relationship in the early post-war and post-normalisation periods began to fail in the 1980s, and have been in a gradual state of decline ever since. Using the concepts of trust and friendship, the article suggests that the lack of trust properties such as empathy, bonding, reliability and predictability have contributed to the deterioration of trust at both elite and popular levels.     

Protectionist Executives

The trade policy literature long presumed that legislatures favor relatively more protectionist policies than executives do, but more recent studies have found little evidence to support the idea. This article clarifies these mixed results with a simple formal model. It finds that legislative protectionism requires very specific circumstances involving the combination of universalistic legislative norms and a particular economic geography, with trade policy interests large relative to legislative districts but small compared to countries. Empirical evidence on this latter point suggests that the necessary spatial patterning is likely to have diminished in many countries since the 1930s, when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act focused attention on institutional differences. The assumption of legislative protectionism based on theories and measures of that era thus may not hold today, and widespread presumptions about institutional preferences may accordingly be uncomfortably fragile.     

No vacancy: the political geography of immigration control in advanced industrial countries

This article presents a unique framework for analyzing the politics of immigration control in developed countries and reviews related political theories. The author describes distinctive patterns of immigration in selected OECD countries and standard explanations. The author argues that the costs and benefits of immigration are spatially unevenly distributed and explains how spatial concentrations affect costs and benefits, as well as how local conditions, population, and the business community create support for and opposition to immigration. Evidence from Great Britain is used to support the framework. Control of immigration is due to the power of local constituencies in creating and maintaining a national political coalition. Local constituency preferences are a systematic, but not exclusive, feature that underpin the politics of immigration control. Other factors may have periodic impacts. The case of Great Britain, during 1955-81, illustrates the importance of disaggregated analysis. Cross national analyses will reveal the variation in level of impact. Japan and Germany, with similar economic and political histories, indicate substantial differences in net demand for immigration. Conditions, such as high, rapidly increasing immigration proportions, access to social services, and higher unemployment, may lead to hostility and less community support for immigration. The theory is based on native-immigrant competition over scarce resources, variable business support depending upon the flexibility of local markets and potential for capital mobility, and the dynamics of party competition as influenced by underlying structural conditions.     

When government fails us: trust in post-socialist civil organizations

The research for this article was motivated by a noticeable discrepancy between levels of participation and trust in post-socialist civil organizations. While civic participation in Central and Eastern Europe is almost nonexistent, levels of trust in post-socialist civil organizations compare favourably to those in Western Europe. The first aim of this article is to understand why citizens place relatively high trust in post-socialist civil organizations. The political context, within which civil organizations operate, reveals one explanation for the high levels of trust in civil organizations: government corruption dissuades citizens from relying on state institutions and creates a void that is filled by informal networks of association and civil organizations. Empirical evidence demonstrates that trust in civil organizations focused on socioeconomic and political development is higher among citizens who express concern about corruption in their country. The second aim of this article is to understand the discrepancy between levels of trust and civic participation. A novel interpretation of past findings suggests that civil organizations' effectiveness, professionalization, transactional capacity and orientation toward service provision may garner citizens' trust while parallel neglect of grassroots mobilization leaves civil organizations short of capitalizing on that trust. Civil organizations' limited focus on interest aggregation, mobilization and representation raises doubts as to whether observers of civil society in the region should look to these organizations as its core component.     

Citizen preferences and public goods: comparing preferences for foreign aid and government programs in Uganda

Different theories about the impact of aid make distinct predictions about citizens’ attitudes toward foreign aid in recipient countries. We investigate their preferences toward aid and government projects in order to examine these different theories. Are citizens indifferent between development projects funded by their own government versus those funded by foreign aid donors, as aid capture theory suggests? To address this, in an experiment on a large, representative sample of Ugandan citizens, we randomly assigned the names of funding groups for actual forthcoming development projects and invited citizens to express support attitudinally and behaviorally. We find that citizens are significantly more willing to show behavioral support in favor of foreign aid projects compared to government programs, especially if they already perceive the government as corrupt or clientelist or if they are not supporters of the ruling party. They also trust donors more, think they are more effective, and do not consistently oppose aid conditionality. This experimental evidence is consistent with a theory that we call donor control which sees donors asbeing able to target and condition aid so that it is not fungible with government revenues and thus to be able to better direct it to meet citizens’ needs.     

Food safety and consumer trust in post-Fukushima Japan

Abstract

The contamination of food with radionuclides has posed serious problems to consumers, producers and policy makers in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011. Many Japanese consumers were and still are worried about the safety of domestic food products. How did the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima affect consumer trust in food safety regulation, and how did the Japanese government try to (re)establish consumer trust in its food governance system? Drawing on empirical data from a consumer survey, expert interviews and documents issued by the Japanese government and public authorities, this paper argues that existing institutions had difficulty handling the situation and rebuilding consumer trust. I will argue that consumers in Japan lack trust in government institutions and the food industry and that the government's risk communication was not suitable for rebuilding trust. This specific situation saw the emergence of new actors from civil society, such as citizens’ radioactivity monitoring stations (CRMS). These actors took over some of the functions of public authorities by providing information and monitoring food. I argue that they have the potential to build trust by fostering the participation of lay people and encouraging a more democratic discourse on food safety. Nevertheless there are some limitations.     

安全焦虑、信号传递与中国对东南亚国家的战略安抚

对于崛起的中国而言,采取系统性战略安抚,树立自我克制的负责任大国形象有助于赢得周边国家信任。然而,在二十多年睦邻外交实践中,东南亚国家始终对崛起的中国的意图感到焦虑,这种担忧因地理邻近性与实力不对称而变得更加敏感。2008年以来,东南亚国家对中国"核心利益"话语、逐步增多的外交制裁以及多边倡议给予了较大关注。面对东南亚国家上升的安全忧虑,中国外交主动释放安抚信号增信释疑。与强制策略不同,安抚策略关注如何从正面激励换取他国的信任。立足于对现有文献的批判性整合,重新梳理善意信号的呈现形式(情感-物质)与成本来源(内生-外生)两大维度,可以从逻辑上生成四种睦邻安抚信号的表达路径:睦邻话语、相互依赖、无私援助与制度约束。面对中国的吸引与安抚,东南亚国家也会主动进行试探与甄别,以讨价还价、社会化、对冲试探和制度牵制四种方式,对中国释放的安抚信号进行评估。由于安抚信号的可信度评估具有主观性,东南亚国家对中国安抚信号存在不同理解,中国外交需换位思考并理解东南亚国家的试探心理。     

Party politics,elections and (mis-)trust in Japan

Abstract

Trust matters profoundly for many dimensions of political life. In this article we focus on political trust: how the trust or mistrust citizens have toward the political process, politicians and government affects politics. Prior research has shown that political trust influences such crucial dimensions of politics as the basic legitimacy of government, political participation, voting behavior, compliance with government, and reform orientation. In this article, we seek to answer three major questions. First, is political trust declining in Japan? Second, we are interested in exploring the determinants of trust and distrust in politics: why do people lose trust in politics? What kinds of voters lose political trust? Third, we explore the consequences: what happens when people lose trust in government and politics.     

权力格局失衡与心理调适——中国东盟关系中的信任问题

2009年以来,尽管中国东盟自贸区成功建成,双方的经济相互依赖达到前所未有的高度,但是中国与东盟仍然经历了严重的信任危机。通过对中国东盟长达20年的信任关系建构历程进行回顾,文章试图回答哪些因素影响着中国东盟信任关系的建构这一理论问题。在对现有理论要素进行折中主义整合并且补充之后,文章从权力格局失衡以及东盟国家心理调适需要的角度重新看待中国与东盟20年来信任关系建构的互动进程,并对当前中国外交应对周边小国信任危机提出政策建议。     

The economics and political economy of going beyond the GATS

This paper addresses the economic and political economy factors explaining why countries agree upon services commitments in regional trade agreements (RTAs) going beyond the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), what we call the commitments gap. Using a unique dataset comprising of detailed schedules of services commitments disaggregated by sub-sectors and covering almost all countries that are members of a services RTA, we are able to quantify the extent to which geographical, systemic as well as economic and institutional factors correlate with a country’s pattern of RTA commitments that go further than commitments made at the WTO. Strong explanatory variables are asymmetries between negotiating partners and market size, together with endowments in mid-skilled labor and institutional governance. Whereas some of these forces are strongly positively associated with commitments made beyond GATS, others are significant determinants that correlate negatively with a country’s commitment patterns in RTAs. We also find strong differences between services industries providing evidence that not all economic and political economy factors are of equal importance for all services. For instance, financial and construction services often diverge significantly from our general pattern of explanations.     

The political economy of exchange rate regimes in transition economies

We show that political economy factors play an important role in shaping the exchange rate policies of transition economies. We argue that tradables producers prefer a floating rate to allow active exchange rate policy to affect their competitiveness, while internationally exposed sectors prefer a fixed rate to provide currency stability. We find support for that argument using data on de facto and de jure exchange rate behavior for 21 countries during the period from 1992 to 2004. Our empirical results serve as the basis for predictions regarding the adoption of the euro in the EU accession countries and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.     

A test of European Union post-accession influence: comparing reactions to political instability in Romania

The positive role of the European Union (EU) in the democratization process in post-communist countries has been amply documented. The pre-accession conditionality was to a large extent the tool used to enhance adoption of norms, and implementation of policy. In this context, it is less clear what happens after countries join the EU and conditionality is no longer an option. This article seeks to provide an answer by analysing how the EU can influence democratic governance after accession of a new member state. In particular, it focuses on the reactions of EU actors in two institutional conflicts (the 2007 and 2012 presidential impeachment referendums) in Romania. The main findings indicate how EU leverage on domestic politics remains possible, though the effectiveness of involvement, monitoring and evaluation of respect for democratic principles depends on a complex interaction of international and domestic actors.     

Winners,Losers, and the Press: The Relationship Between Political Parallelism and the Legitimacy Gap

Recent work has explored how individual and institutional factors affect the gap in perceptions of political legitimacy between electoral winners and electoral losers, but has ignored the role that the political information environment, in general, and ideologically biased media, in particular, plays in exacerbating or diminishing this gap. By combining individual-level public opinion data in 28 countries, an expert survey on media systems, and a variety of country-level indicators, I find that higher levels of political parallelism in a country are associated with a larger winner-loser gap in institutional trust and satisfaction with democracy. The relationship is contingent on whether or not people are actually exposed to said media. This research, which links the study of political communication with the study of comparative political behavior, indicates that the increasing availability of partisan news around the world is a cause for concern.     

Institutional legitimacy in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

How do personal encounters with legal institutions shape citizens’ confidence in those institutions throughout sub-Saharan Africa? Using Afrobarometer’s cross-national citizen survey, we show that negative first-hand experiences with government courts and police erode citizens’ trust in those state institutions but do not tend to disrupt citizens’ perceptions of their authority to arbitrate or enforce the law. Individuals from diverse demographic backgrounds imbue state institutions with the right to perform their governance and law-enforcement duties, even after experiencing institutional incompetence or injustice. This article advances existing comparative research on legal institutions, which tends to conflate trust and legitimacy and overlooks the distinction between de facto performance and de jure authority. We suggest that rule-of-law institutions have deeper roots than some scholars have previously supposed.