1
Partisanship and Institutional Trust:
A Comparative Analysis of Emerging Democracies in East Asia
Kai-ping Huang <kaipingh@utexas.edu> The University of Texas at Austin
Feng-yu Lee <fylee323@ntu.edu.tw> National Taiwan University
and
Tse-min Lin <tml@austin.utexas.edu> The University of Texas at Austin
2 Introduction
Trust in political institutions has important political consequences, including a regime’s
legitimacy (Gershtenson, Ladewig, and Plane 2006, p. 883). What are the factors that affect
citizens’ trust in political institutions? Intuitively speaking, citizens trust political institutions
when those institutions perform well (Lipset and Schneider 1987; Hetherington 1998; Putnam
1994). However, how do citizens acquire the information and use it to appraise political
institutions? The media, as the main channel of public information, can of course affect
institutional trust by its coverage of institutional performance and scandals (Orren 1997). In a
more subtle and yet under-developed way, social capital theory argues that institutional trust is
closely associated with vibrant social networking and social trust (Putnam 2001). These theories
view institutional trust as the end product of good government performance and studies in this
vein focus mainly on what factors uphold government performance and the flow of information.
This seemingly objective way of assessing political institutions has shortcomings. Firstly,
trust is a psychological phenomenon. According to a classic definition, “An individual may be
said to have trust in the occurrence of an event if he expects its occurrence and his expectation
leads to behavior which he perceives to have greater negative motivational consequences if the
expectation is not confirmed than positive motivational consequences if it is confirmed”
(Deutsch 1958, p. 266; Warren 1999). Such risk-taking behavior involves not only an objective
assessment of whether the expected event actually occurs but also a subjective calculation on the
part of the trusting person. Secondly, institutional trust is more complicated because political
institutions were designed with different principles and purposes. In particular, some institutions
function through partisan elections while others through more neutral processes. When assessing
3
conflicts with their partisan cognitions. In this paper, we argue that trust in partisan institutions,
vis-à-vis trust in neutral institutions, is likely to be subject to cognitive dissonance, and citizens
may rely their partisanship as a heuristic shortcut in evaluating the trustworthiness of partisan
institutions. Without including partisanship as a subjective factor in the analysis of institutional
trust, we are omitting a variable that may be as important as the objective factors underlying
institutional performance.
Subjective factors of institutional trust are important in established democracies, but they
should be even more important in emerging democracies. This is because political institutions in
emerging democracies are not far removed from these countries’ authoritarian past and are likely
to invoke ambivalent emotions from citizens. Until these emotions completely die down, trust or
suspicion in political institutions may depend on subjective factors in emerging democracies
more than in established democracies.
In this paper, we investigate the effect of partisanship on institutional trust in six emerging
democracies in Ease Asia. Using data from the third wave Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), we
construct indicators of institutional trust and identify their determinants. We focus on
partisanship as our key explanatory variable. Our research question concerns the asymmetric
effect of party ID, i.e., whether identifiers of the opposition parties tend to have weaker
institutional trust. But we also look into different types of political institutions to see if the
asymmetric effect is more pronounced in partisan institutions than in neutral institutions. We
conclude by discussing the implications of our findings on the consolidation of democracy.
Institutional Trust and Its Sources
4
social networking and generalized trust (Putnam 2001). Putnam (1993, 2001) reasons as social
capital develops, it also helps build efficient and effective political institutions, which in turn
boost people’s trust in those institutions. The social capital theory, however, has raised some
theoretical questions and lacked consistent empirical support. Theoretically, the working
mechanism of how generalized trust and social networking helps improve government
performance is unclear. To Putnam, it seems that social capital contributes to government
performance through two means. The first is civic responsibility as a response to social trust; and
the second is civic engagement with public concerns in mind (1993). The two mechanisms,
however, are based on different logics. While the first requires self-consciousness and honesty of
politicians and officials to perform well, the later is actually a monitoring mechanism that keeps
politicians/officials accountable. In other words, social capital is paradoxically begetting both
trustworthy politicians and suspicious citizens at the same time. While this paradox may be
inherent in the classic concept of trust, i.e., trust is essentially a risk-taking behavior and hence
the trusting party must be wary of the trusted party, it does render dubious the causal effects of
social capital on institutional trust.
Besides its theoretical ambiguity, social capital theory also faces mixed empirical support.
Cross-national comparison of institutional trust shows that social trust is positively correlated
with institutional trust in advanced democracies (Newton and Norris 2000). In the United States,
earlier levels of social trust were found to contribute to institutional trust in the later time, but
social networking only has a modest effect on institutional trust (Damico, Conway, and Damico
2000). In newly democratized countries, such as South Korea, it was found that civic
engagement had no effect on institutional trust while social trust is negatively correlated with
5
scholars suggest that all political institutions are not the same because that they were designed
with different principles and purposes. It is therefore necessary to distinguish different types of
political institutions in investigating the causal relationship between social capital and
institutional trust.
Institutional Trust and Types of Political Institutions
When investigating institutional trust, researchers usually lump all political institutions
together to form a single measure of institutional trust. Rothstein and Stolle (2008) criticized
such a one-dimensional view. Firstly, some institutions, such as the executive office and the
parliament, are supposed to operate along partisan lines. In democracies, these institutions are
organized by elections in which political parties with different platforms compete for control.
After an election, citizens expect these institutions to make policies consistent with the ideology
of the party that wins the election. Under such a premise, confidence in these institutions is likely
to vary among citizens according to whether or not they identify with the incumbent party. Thus,
associating trust in these institutions with social trust only may be misleading if partisanship is
not taken into account. Secondly, other political institutions, such as the courts, the military, and
the police are supposed to operate in an impartial, non-partisan manner. These institutions are
crucial for maintaining the order and efficiency of governance. Hence, if trust is a risk-taking
behavior, the performance of these institutions is pertinent with the development of social trust
since they are the institutions that punish trust abusers in a society. Therefore, Rothstein and
Stolle argue, it is specific to these neutral institutions that social trust and institutional trust are
likely to be associated.
6
dimensions underlying the indicators of institutional trust. They named the three factors partisan
institutions (represented by parliament, political parties, and government etc.), neutral and order
institutions (the military, the police, and legal institutions), and power checking institutions (TV
and the press). Treating trust in different types of institutions as independent variables, Rothstein
and Stolle (2008) found a positive relationship between institutional trust and generalized trust.
They, however, did not investigate the effects of partisanship on trust in different types of
institutions at individual level.
For the U.S. case, Lipset and Schneider (1983) conducted factor analysis in an attempt to
discover the underlying structure of institutional trust. They were generally satisfied with a
one-factor solution, although their results hint that the media might be different from all other
political institutions. Cook and Gronke (2001) used both exploratory and confirmatory factor
analysis to reveal a much more complex structure of institutional trust. Pooling cross sections of
the General Social Survey from 1973 to 1998, Cook and Gronke found Republicans tend to have
less confidence in the media but more in other institutions, while Democrats tend to have more
confidence in the media but less in other institutions. While Cook and Gronke tested the effect of
party identification per se, Gershtenson, Ladewig, and Plane (2006) focused on identification with the party in control of an institution. Their findings show that American party identifiers tend to have more trust in Congress when their own party is in control.
These studies indicate that institutional trust is a psychological attitude that depends on both
the trusting citizen’s party identification and the type of the institution to which trust is to be
conferred. None of the works cited above, however, has investigated the effects of partisanship
on different types of institutions at the individual level. In this paper, we propose that the effect
7
institution in question is partisan or neutral in nature. Our argument is based on the social
psychological theory of cognitive dissonance to which we now turn.
Theory and Hypotheses
The literature discussed above shows that institutional trust may be influenced by various
sources, including government performance, social capital, news consumption, and party
identification. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between institutional trust and party
identification. Specifically, we follow Rothstein and Stolle (2008) in distinguishing between
partisan institutions and neutral institutions and examine their respective relationship with party
identification. We consider the media as a separate dimension concerning institutional trust but
do not investigate its determinants.
The reason that trust in partisan institutions and trust in neutral institutions are
fundamentally different, we argue, can be better illuminated by the theory of cognitive
dissonance in social psychology (Festinger 1957). When conflicting ideas or events cannot be
reconciled, people tend to alter their cognitions in order to reduce the discomfort caused by the
resulting disequilibrium. Cognitive dissonance is likely to be at work when the occurrences of
new events are compounded by the lack of information. The theory has been used to explain the
so-called issue projection in which voters’ perceptions of candidates’ issue positions are
influenced by their own positions and their evaluations of those candidates (Brody and Page
1972; Kinder 1978; Conover and Feldman 1982; Lin 2010; Lin and Lin 2012). Specifically, a
voter who supports a political candidate may perceive a proximity closer than reality between the
candidate’s position and the voter’s own position because a wider distance, even if objectively
8
who opposes a candidate may perceive a distance wider than reality between the candidate’s
position and the voter’s own position. Such subjective perceptions help balance conflicting
cognitions and reduce the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance.
We argue that cognitive dissonance is likely to be at work when a party identifier is asked to
appraise the trustworthiness of a political institution. To the extent that the institution is
associated with partisan politics, identifiers of the incumbent party are likely to perceive it as
more trustworthy than what is objectively justified by the performance of the institution.
Conversely, identifiers of the opposition party are likely to perceive the institution as less
trustworthy than justified. Overall, there is going to be a significant gap in institutional trust
between identifiers of the incumbent party and those of the opposition party, controlling for
social capital, government performance, news consumption, etc. The trust gap should manifest
itself in political institutions in general because voters tend to perceive the incumbent party as
responsible for all governmental institutions. However, we argue that, when partisan institutions
are separated from neutral institutions, the trust gap pertains mainly to partisan institutions
because the politicians in control of these institutions are unmistakably affiliated with the
political parties with which citizens may or may not identify. Conversely, we argue that the trust
gap should be less prevalent concerning neutral institutions.
In contrast with the asymmetry in the effects of party identification on trust in partisan vs.
neutral institutions, we argue that the asymmetry should not be present in the effects of social
trust. The notion of social trust is non-partisan in nature. There is no reason to expect asymmetric
effects. We expect social trust to have significant effects on both partisan and neutral institutions.
Overall, we propose the following hypotheses:
9
socioeconomic status, identifiers of the opposition parties, compared with identifiers of the
incumbent party, tend to have less trust in political institutions in general.
Hypothesis 2: Controlling for social capital, government performance, news consumption, and
socioeconomic status, identifiers of the opposition parties, compared with identifiers of the
incumbent party, tend to have less trust in partisan institutions. However, they do not necessarily
have less trust in neutral institutions.
Hypothesis 3: Ceteris Paribus, social trust tends to have positive effects on partisan institutions
and neutral institutions.
Data and Methods
To test our hypotheses, we use data from Wave 3 of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS).
This wave of the ABS includes 11 countries, from which we chose Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia,
The Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, which we consider emerging democracies.1 Emerging democracies are particularly relevant to our investigation because, as we pointed out in the
introduction, subjective factors of institutional trust may be more prevalent in these countries.
Because these countries have different political systems and levels of democracy, we conduct our
analysis for each country respectively instead of polling all countries together in a single
analysis.2
Concerning institutional trust, the ABS asked its respondents to indicate their degree of trust
1
Wave 3 Asian Barometer Surveys were conducted in 2010-2011. More specifically, the survey times for our cases are: South Korea, May 2011; Taiwan, January-February 2010; Mongolia, April-June 2010; The Philippines, March 2010; Thailand, August-December 2010; Indonesia, May 2011.
2
A document with brief descriptions of these countries’ political systems at the time of survey is available upon request. For a list of their political parties, please see Appendix 1.3.
10
in 13 institutions, including the president (or prime minister), the courts, the national government,
political parties, parliament, civil service, the military, the police, local government, newspapers,
television, the election commission, and NGOs. For the exact wording of the items and the scale
of trust, see Appendix 1.
An important decision for our analysis is how to define partisan institutions and neutral
institutions. Conceivably, whether an institution is partisan or neutral depends on the
constitutional and political contexts of each country. Without referring to these contexts, one way
to operationalize institutional trust is to use exploratory factor analysis to sort out the institutions.
In practice, there are difficulties with this approach as the number of significant factors may be
different from country to country and those factors may not unambiguously coincide with
substantively classified partisan and neutral institutions. Furthermore, different operational
definitions from country to country are certainly not conducive to the comparison of institutional
trust in these countries. Because of these considerations, we decide to impose a consistent
operational definition for all countries. We argue that the involvement of national elections, in
which all major parties compete, is the principal criterion for partisan politics. Thus we classify
the president/prime minister, the national government, and parliament as partisan institutions and
the courts, civil service, the military, the police, and the election commission as neutral
institutions.3 For each class of institutions we construct a composite scale of trust that is simply the average trust in the institutions involved in each class. Therefore, for each country we have
two 4-point composite scales: trust in partisan institutions and trust in neutral institutions.
3
We exclude political parties and local government from our analysis. These institutions are not unique nationally, and respondents of the ABS may have been referring to different entities. We also exclude newspapers, television, and NGOs because they obviously belong to a different type of institutions that we do not explore in this paper.
11
Additionally, we construct another 4-point composite scale of general institutional trust that is
the average trust in all partisan and neutral institutions. As averages these scales retain the unit of
their component scales, with 1 indicating no trust at all and 4 indicating a great deal of trust. We
assume that these are interval scales.
Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for the level of trust in partisan institutions and
neutral institutions by country. It shows that trust in both types of institutions is generally lower
in Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia than in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. A more notable
pattern, however, is that trust in neutral institutions are consistently higher than trust in partisan
institutions across all six countries. Furthermore, the standard deviations associated with neutral
institutions are consistently smaller than those associated with partisan institutions, implying a
higher degree of consensus in citizens’ trust in neutral institutions. Since our theory stipulates
that trust in partisan institutions, but not trust in neutral institutions, is mitigated by partisan
politics, the divergence in both the level and the spread of trust between the two types of
institutions provides a sort of discriminant validity to our measures (Campbell and Fiske 1959).
The correlations shown in Table 1 also indicate that although the two measures are not
completely independent, the extent of overlap is at most modest.
(Table 1 about here)
To test our hypotheses, we turn to regression analyses with general institutional trust, trust
in partisan institutions, and trust in neutral institutions as our dependent variables. For
independent variables we choose party identification, civic engagement, social trust, government
12
education, and income. A brief account of these measures is given in Appendix 1.
Results and Discussion
As the first columns of Tables 2.1-2.6 illustrate, our first hypothesis is supported by
empirical data. Citizens do evaluate political institutions in a subjective way in that partisanship
plays a role that biases the evaluation. More specifically, controlling for social capital,
government performance, news consumption, and socioeconomic status, identifiers of the
opposition parties and even non-identifiers, compared with identifiers of the incumbent party,
tend to have less trust in political institutions in general. This is true for all the six countries we
investigate although the evidence is not as strong for Mongolia and Indonesia as for Korea,
Taiwan, The Philippines, and Thailand. Thus, studies that ignore the effect of partisanship might
have overemphasized the significance of other, less biased factors.
(Table 3 about here)
Our second hypothesis postulates that, other things being equal, the effect of partisanship is
more significant in relation to partisan institutions than in relation to neutral institutions. As the
second and third columns of Tables 2.1-2.6 show, this hypothesis is supported for Korea, Taiwan,
The Philippines, and Thailand and not clearly so for Mongolia and Indonesia. The evidence is
strongest for The Philippines, where identifiers of the GO coalition and other parties, and even
non-identifiers, compared with identifiers of the TEAM Unity coalition, have significantly less
trust in partisan institutions, and yet partisanship has no significant effect at all in relation to trust
13
with Pan Blue identifiers, have significantly less trust in partisan institutions, but their trust level
in neutral institutions is not significantly mitigated by partisanship.
The evidence is robust, albeit not so dramatic, for Korea and Thailand. For these cases, the
effect of partisanship is not completely absent in relation to neutral institutions, but it is clearly
smaller than the corresponding effect in relation to partisan institutions. In Korea, for example,
identifiers of the United Democratic Party and other parties, compared with identifiers of the
Grand National Party, have significantly less trust in both partisan institutions and neutral
institutions. However, the effect is clearly stronger in relation to trust in partisan institutions than
to trust in neutral institutions (-.288 vs. -.117 for identifiers of the United Democratic Party and
-.351 vs. -.138 for identifiers of other parties). Rendering additional support for Hypothesis 2,
non-identifiers in Korea, compared with identifiers of the Grand National Party, exhibit
significantly less trust in partisan institutions, but their trust in neutral institutions is not
statistically different from identifiers of the Grand National Party. For the case of Thailand, the
pattern is similar. Partisanship has strong, negative effects for identifiers of the Pheu Thai Party
and other parties and for non-identifiers in relation to partisan institutions, but it has only a much
weaker effect in relation to neutral institutions that is statistically significant only for identifiers
of the Pheu Thai Party (-.695 vs. -.191).
How do we explain the fact that partisanship does exhibit some biasing effects on
supposedly neutral institutions in some East Asian countries? As we mentioned earlier, the newly
democratized countries we investigated here are not far removed from their authoritarian past.
Under an authoritarian regime, the courts, civil service, the military, and the police were more
often than not instruments for the regime to suppress its oppositions. With few exceptions,
14
regime. Even after democratization, these officials and personnel tend to retain their loyalty and
support the regime party in elections. The political affiliation is so deep-rooted that it may not be
feasible for these institutions to become really impartial even as democracy is being consolidated.
Even if it is not completely infeasible, it may be difficult for identifiers of the parties opposing
the old regime party to change their perceptions about the partiality of these institutions. All
these apply to the election commission that is relatively new in some countries, as its personnel
are likely to be drawn from civil service. It is conceivable, however, that perceptions about the
partiality or impartiality of institutions, be it neutral or partisan, can vary from institution to
institution. For this reason, we examine the effects of partisanship on individual institutions and
summarize relevant results in Table 3.
(Table 3 about here)
As predicted, Table 3 shows that the biasing effect of partisanship on trust is not uniform
within each class of institutions. In general, however, partisanship does have more and stronger
effects on trust in partisan institutions than on trust in neutral institutions. Except for Mongolia
and Indonesia, the executive office tends to trigger the strongest negative partisan effect on trust.
The next is the national government. As a partisan institution, the parliament is subjected to the
least partisan effect on trust, presumably because all the major parties are represented in this
institution. Among neutral institutions, partisan effects on trust are most conspicuous in the
courts, which were significantly less trusted by identifiers of the main opposition parties in
Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The police was also perceived as partial by opposition-party
15
and Thailand. Thailand is the only country in which identifiers of the opposition party had
misgivings about the military.
These results are not surprising. The courts in Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand were considered
partial to the incumbent parties as many opposition politicians were convicted of wrongdoings,
especially corruption charges. In Thailand , a military coup ousted Prime Minister Thaksin
Shinawatra in 2006, and a military tribunal outlawed his Thai Rak Thai Party in 2007. In
Mongolia in 2008, the legislative election was mired with electoral disputes. As vote tally went
suspiciously slow, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, the Democratic Party (DP) Chairman, refused to
accept the results that would inevitably give the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP)
a clear victory. In Thailand, electoral disputes also rose after the 2007 election as the Election
Commission issued the so-called “red cards” to many MPs of the opposition party who were
suspected of vote-buying.4 Similarly, in the Philippines, accusations abounded that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the winning incumbent of the K-4 coalition, rigged the 2004 presidential
election, and there were many allegations of electoral irregularities in the 2007 mid-term
elections.5
Among the six countries we analyze, Mongolia and Indonesia stand out in that no
significant differences exist between identifiers of the main opposition parties and those of the
incumbent parties in terms of trust in partisan institutions. In fact, for Mongolia, identification
with DP actually has a significant positive effect (.575, p<.001) on trust in the executive office.
Why are these two cases different from others?
4
Candidates given red-cards will be banned from participating in the ensuing by-election. 5
In the Philippines case, identification with the Genuine Opposition (GO) coalition has an effect of -.202 (p=.07) on trust in the COMELEC. The effects of identification with other parties and no party ID are respectively statistically significant at the .05 level.
16
In Mongolia, although the DP lost the 2008 election that it accused of being rigged, the
party soon became a coalition partner of the MPRP’s government. Moreover, in 2009, the DP’s
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj narrowly defeated the MPRP’s Nambaryn Enkhbayar, the incumbent, to
become the country’s President (Bulag 2009, 2010). Fears of electoral controversy did not
materialize this time as Enkhbayar conceded defeat, and power sharing apparently boosted DP
identifiers’ trust level in partisan institutions, especially the executive office.
The Indonesia case might be explained by the high popularity of the Democratic Party’s
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (commonly known as SBY), who had been President since 2004. A
musician who has three pop albums under his name, SBY’s popularity had taken a toll on the
other two major parties, GOLKAR and PDIP-Struggle (Sherlok 2009). To ease concerns over his
party’s dominance, SBY invited parties in the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) to join the
cabinet (Mietzner 2010, p. 189). That gesture effectively reduced partisan tensions.
Our third hypothesis finds overwhelming support in most cases. Social trust has significant,
positive effects on both partisan and neutral institutions in Korea, Mongolia, and Thailand. It has
significant, positive effects on neutral institutions in Taiwan and the Philippines, and it has a
significant, positive effect on partisan institutions in Indonesia. In contrast, civic engagement has
a significant, positive effect only in Korea, and only on trust in neutral institutions. These results
indicate that the relationship between social trust and institutional trust is present in new
democracies in East Asia. Between the two essential components of social capital, social trust is
apparently more relevant than civic engagement as a determinant of institutional trust. Thus,
Putnam’s postulated causation of joining and trusting is not substantiated here. Our results are
more in agreement with Rothstein and Stolle’s (2008) argument that social trust has a stronger
17
A case in point is Thailand. Thailand is the only country among our cases that went through
a dramatic political change – a military coup in 2006 – between the last two waves of ABS
survey. In ABS Wave 2 (2006), 45 percent of all Thai respondents chose the statement “Most
people can be trusted” over “You must be very careful in dealing with people” and nonresponse
options. That number decreased substantially in ABS Wave 3 (2010), to only 26 percent.
Meanwhile, membership of formal organizations in Thailand increased from 24 percent to
44percent. The conflicting trends do not square with social capital theory. We suspect that the
political conflict resulted from the 2006 coup caused the level of social trust to decline which in
turn caused trust in political institutions, including partisan institutions, the courts, the military,
and the Election Commission, to decline. The point is social trust was effectual on institutional
trust even as its level declined while civic engagement was inconsequential as its level rose.
Indonesia, again, stands out as an exception in that it is the only country of which social
trust does not have a significant effect on trust in neutral institutions. If the causal mechanism
between social trust and institutional trust is mediated through the capability of political
institutions to lower the risk of trusting, it seems that Indonesians believe that such a capability
comes more from partisan institutions than neutral institutions.
Conclusion
The profound influence of institutional trust on regime legitimacy has long been confirmed.
It is thus very important to investigate the determinants of institutional trust. Existent studies
tend to neglect the effect of partisanship and, hence, omit a crucial factor of institutional trust.
18
institutions in general and partisan and neutral institutions in particular. Empirical findings from
six emerging East Asian democracies largely support our theory and hypotheses.
Our findings shed some lights on social capital theory. The presumption that institutional
trust is generated from objective assessment of government performance does not hold true
across all types of political institutions. Since partisan institutions are formed through elections,
and parties in control of these institutions represent the interests of their constituents, trust in
these institutions is subject to partisan bias. Because of cognitive dissonance, partisanship can be
projected to citizens’ assessment of these institutions.
At first glance, the implications of our findings seem pessimistic. If institutional trust is
subject to partisan projection, there is a limit as to what a democratic government can do to
improve trust by improving governance. In recent years, the governments of some of the East
Asian countries we investigated here have suffered from dramatic decline in political trust. Our
findings raise the question as to whether such decline is due to bad governance or increasing
partisan polarization. This question is especially pertinent to emerging democracies because
partisan polarization is a lingering fact from these countries’ authoritarian past. Obviously
whichever cause it was, extensive distrust is always not conducive to a regime’s legitimacy, but
19 Appendix 1.
(1.1) ABS Items on Institutional Trust
Question Wording Q7-19 I’m going to name a number of institutions. For each one, please tell me how much
trust do you have in them? Is it a great deal of trust, quite a lot of trust, not very much trust, or none at all?
Q7 The president (for presidential system) or Prime Minister (for parliamentary system)
Q8 The courts Q9 The national government Q10 Political parties Q11 Parliament Q12 Civil service
Q13 The military (or armed forces) Q14 The police
Q15 Local government Q16 Newspapers Q17 Television
Q18 The election commission [specify institution by name]
Q 19 NGOs
Note: All the questions have the same scale but the scale is reversed in our analysis such that 1=none at all, 2= not very much trust, 3=quite a lot of trust, 4=a great deal of trust.
20
(1.2) Items used as Independent and Control Variables
Item Question Q47 Partisanship: Among the political parties listed here, which party if any do you feel
closest to? Partisanship is recoded as dummy variables. The details of coding scheme are provided in 1.3.
Q20-22 Civic engagement: membership in formal groups. Civic engagement is recoded as 0. “Non-member” and 1. “Member(s)”.
Q23 Social trust: it is recoded as 0. “You must be careful in dealing with people, and 1. “Most people can be trusted”.
Q3 Government performance-economy: What do you think will be the state of our country’s economic condition a few years from now? The variable is recoded as 1. “Much worse”, 2. “A little worse”, 3. “About the same”, 4. “A little better”, and 5. “Much better”.
Q118 Government performance-anti-corruption: In your opinion, is the government working to crack down on corruption and root out bribery? The variable is recoded as 1. “Doing nothing”, 2. “It is not doing much”, 3. “It is doing something”, and 4. “It is doing its best”.
Q44 News consumption: How often do you follow news about politics and
government? The variable is recoded as 1. “Practically never”, 2. “Not even once a week”, 3. “Once or twice a week”, 4. “Several times a week”, and 5. “Everyday”.
SE3a Age
SE5 Highest level of education
21 (1.3) Coding Scheme of Partisanship
Country Coding
Korea
Governing party: Grand National Party
Main opposition party: United Democratic Party
Other parties: identifiers with parties other than the governing party and the main opposition party.
No party ID: respondents who are not close to any party. Taiwan
Governing party: Pan Blue parties, including KMT, PFP, and the New Party Main opposition party: Pan Green parties, including DPP and TSU. No party ID: respondents who are not close to any party.
Mongolia
Governing party: MPRP
Main opposition party: Democratic Party
Other parties: identifiers with parties other than the governing party and the main opposition party.
No party ID: respondents who are not close to any party.
The Philippines
Governing party: TEAM Unity, including LAKAS, KAMPI, and LDP. Main opposition party: Genuine Opposition (GO), including LP, PMP, and
PDP-LABAN.
Other parties: identifiers with parties other than the governing party and the main opposition party.
No Party ID: respondents who are not close to any party.
Thailand
Governing Party: Democrat Party Main opposition party: Pheu Thai Party
Other parties: identifiers with parties other than the governing party and the main opposition party.
No Party ID: respondents who are not close to any party.
Indonesia
Governing Party: Democratic Party Main opposition party 1: GOLKAR Main opposition party2: PDIP-Struggle Religious party: PKS, PAN, and PKB
Other parties: identifiers with parties other than the governing party, the main opposition parties, and religious parties.
22 References
Brody, Richard A., and Benjamin I. Page. 1972. “Comment: The Assesment of Policy Voting.” American Political Science Review 66(2):450-458.
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2010. “Mongolia in 2009: From Landlocked to Land-linked Cosmopolitan.” Asian Survey 50(1): 97-103
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2009. “Mongolia in 2008: From Mongolia to Mine-golia.” Asian Survey 49(1): 129-134.
Campbell, Donald T. and Donald W. Fiske. 1959. “Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethods Matrix.” Psychological Bulletin 56(2):81-105.
Conover, Pamela J., and Stanley Feldman. 1982. “Projection and the Perception of Candidates’ Issue Positions.” The Western Political Quarterly 35(2):228-244.
Cook, T. E. and P. Gronke. 2001. “The Dimensions of Institutional Trust: How Distinct is Public Confidence in the Media.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.
Deutsch, Morton. 1958. “Trust and Suspicion.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 2(4):265-279.
Damico, Alfonso J., M. Margaret Conway, and Sandra Bowman Damico. 2000. “Patterns of Political Trust and Mistrust: Three Moments in the Lives of Democratic Citizens.” Polity 32(3):377-400.
Festinger, Leon. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson.
Gershtenson, Joe, Jeff Ladewig, and Dennis L. Plane. 2006. “Parties, Institutional Control, and Trust in Government.” Social Science Quarterly 87(4):882-902.
Hetherington, Marc J. 1998. “The Political Relevance of Political Trust.” American Political Science Review 94(4):791-808.
Kim, Ji-Young. 2005. “‘Bowling Together’ Isn't a Cure-All: The Relationship between Social Capital and Political Trust in South Korea.” International Political Science Review 26(2):193-213.
Kinder, Donald R. 1978. “Political Person Perception: The Asymmetrical Influence of Sentiment and Choice on Perceptions of Presidential Candidates.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36(8):859-71.
Lin, Tse-min, and Tzu-Hsin Lin. 2012. “Party Identification and the Perception of Candidates’ Issue Positions.” Prepared for presentation at the International Conference on the Maturing of
23
Taiwan Democracy: Findings and Insights from the 2012 TEDS Survey. November 3-4, 2012, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Lin, Tzu-Hsin. 2010. “Voters’ Perception of Candidate Positions: The Unification-Independence Issue in Taiwan’s 2004 and 2008 Presidential Elections.” Master’s Thesis. Department of Political Science, Soochow University.
Lipset, S. M. and W. Schneider. 1983. “The Decline of Confidence in American Institutions.” Political Science Quarterly 98(3):379-402.
Mietzner, M. 2010. “Indonesia in 2009: Electoral Contestation and Economic Resilience." Asian Survey 50(1):185-194.
Newton, K. and P. Norris. 2000. “Confidence in Public Institutions.” In Disaffected Democracies. What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries, ed. Susan Pharr and Robert Putnam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 52-73.
Orren, G. 1997. “Fall from Grace: The Publics Loss of Faith in Government.” In Why People Don’t Trust Government, ed. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Philip D. Zelikow, and David C. King. Cambridge: Harvard University Press pp. 77-107.
Putnam, R. D. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Putnam, R. D. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rothstein, Bo and Dietlind Stolle. 2008. “The State and Social Capital: An Institutional Theory of Generalized Trust.” Comparative Politics 40(4):441-459.
Sherlock, Stephen. 2009. Parties and Elections in Indonesia 2009: The Consolidation of Democracy. Research Paper 35 Parliament of Australia.
Warren, Mark E. 1999. “Introduction.” In Democracy and Trust, ed. Mark E. Warren. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press pp. 1-21.
24 Table 1. Institutional Trust, by Country
Korea Taiwan Mongolia Philippines Thailand Indonesia Trust in Partisan Institutions
Mean 1.95 2.19 2.23 2.31 2.60 2.62
Std. Dev. 0.017 0.014 0.016 0.020 0.018 0.015
N 1197 1544 1210 1199 1462 1512
Trust in Neutral Institutions
Mean 2.39 2.45 2.32 2.56 2.78 2.74
Std. Dev. 0.015 0.012 0.014 0.018 0.016 0.012
N 1203 1565 1210 1198 1483 1519
Correlation between Trusts in Partisan and Neutral Institutions
25 Table 2. Regression Analysis of Institutional Trust (2.1) Korea
General Inst. Trust Trust in Partisan Institutions
Trust in Neutral Institutions Intercept
(Grand National Party)
1.696*** (.141) 1.126*** (.162) 2.025*** (.157) Party ID United Democratic Party -.183*** (.041) -.288*** (.047) -.117* (.046) Other Parties -.216*** (.055) -.351*** (.066) -.138* (.059) No Party ID -.095** (.034) -.158** (.041) -.054 (.038) Social Capital Civic engagement .066* (.028) .061 (.033) .071* (.032) Social trust .144*** (.027) .123*** (.033) .154*** (.031) Govt. Performance Economy .083*** (.017) .104*** (.020) .071*** (.019) Anti-corruption .204*** (.021) .231*** (.025) .193*** (.023) News Consumption -.043** (.014) -.042** (.016) -.041* (.016) Socioeconomic Status Age .002 (.001) .004** (.001) .0009 (.001) Education -.015 (.009) -.002 (.011) -.022* (.010) Income -.018 (.012) -.006 (.013) -.026 (.013) No. of observation 1055 1053 1055 R-squared 0.2381 0.2442 0.1713 Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
26 (2.2) Taiwan
General Inst. Trust Trust in Partisan Institutions
Trust in Neutral Institutions Intercept (Pan Blue) 1.731***
(.109) 1.600*** (.129) 1.821*** (.120) Party ID Pan Green -.178*** (.030) -.363*** (.037) -.065 (.033) No Party ID -.181*** (.028) -.266*** (.034) -.131*** (.032) Social Capital Civic engagement .011 (.025) -.029 (.030) .037 (.028) Social trust .067** (.025) .049 (.029) .075** (.027) Govt. Performance Economy .077*** (.013) .124*** (.016) .052*** (.014) Anti-corruption .181*** (.017) .196*** (.021) .170*** (.019) News Consumption -.006 (.008) -.014 (.009) -.00009 (.009) Socioeconomic Status Age .002* (.001) .0008 (.001) .002* (.001) Education -.009 (.008) -.009 (.010) -.012 (.009) Income -.015 (.010) -.020 (.012) -.010 (.012) No. of observation 1247 1236 1247 R-squared 0.2322 0.2907 0.1460 Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
27 (2.3) Mongolia
General Inst. Trust Trust in Partisan Institutions Trust in Neutral Institutions Intercept (MPRP) 1.906*** (.099) 1.557*** (.134) 2.122*** (.104) Party ID Democratic Party .013 (.033) .161 (.042) -.076* (.037) Other Parties -.158** (.050) -.164* (.069) -.156** (.056) No Party ID -.148*** (.037) -.045 (.049) -.212*** (.041) Social Capital Civic engagement .024 (.029) .039 (.041) .015 (.030) Social trust .155*** (.037) .225*** (.053) .113** (.038) Govt. Performance Economy .089*** (.016) .106*** (.022) .078*** (.018) Anti-corruption .094*** (.017) .110*** (.024) .083*** (.018) News Consumption .017 (.013) .026 (.018) .011 (.013) Socioeconomic Status Age -.002* (.001) .0001 (.001) -.003** (.001) Education -.014** (.005) -.012 (.007) -.015** (.006) Income -.017 (.012) -.032 (.016) -.008 (.013) No. of observation 1114 1114 1114 R-squared 0.1378 0.1353 0.0957 Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
28 (2.4) The Philippines
General Inst. Trust Trust in Partisan Institutions Trust in Neutral Institutions Intercept (TEAM Unity) 2.450 (.156) 2.316*** (.183) 2.532*** (.168) Party ID Genuine Opposition2 -.162* (.071) -.249** (.084) -.110 (.076) Other Parties -.262** (.086) -.401*** (.101) -.179 (.091) No Party ID -.170* (.069) -.273** (.080) -.107 (.074) Social Capital Civic engagement .039 (.041) .018 (.049) .053 (.048) Social trust .233** (.068) .121 (.077) .309*** (.076) Govt. Performance Economy .086*** (.018) .117*** (.021) .066** (.019) Anti-corruption .129*** (.023) .146*** (.027) .119*** (.025) News Consumption .028 (.016) .015 (.020) .037* (.018) Socioeconomic Status Age -.005** (.001) -.004** (.001) -.006*** (.001) Education -.038** (.010) -.038** (.011) -.039*** (.011) Income -.032 (.021) -.053* (.025) -.020 (.022) No. of observation 1010 1010 1009 R-squared 0.1436 0.1415 0.1125 Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
29 (2.5) Thailand
General Inst. Trust Trust in Partisan Institutions Trust in Neutral Institutions Intercept (Democrat Party) 1.957*** (.186) 1.699*** (.217) 2.133*** (.201) Party ID
Pheu Thai Party -.384*** (.068) -.695*** (.085) -.191* (.076) Other Parties -.137 (.116) -.395** (.131) .011 (.121) No Party ID -.089* (.042) -.244*** (.056) .005 (.048) Social Capital Civic engagement .039 (.041) -.022 (.050) .077 (.045) Social trust .100* (.042) .119* (.052) .093* (.046) Govt. Performance Economy .195*** (.024) .238*** (.028) .166*** (.026) Anti-corruption .179*** (.023) .225*** (.028) .157*** (.025) News Consumption .008 (.019) -5.07e-06 (.023) .012 (.021) Socioeconomic Status Age -.001 (.001) -.001 (.002) -.001 (.001) Education -.037*** (.010) -.034** (.012) -.040** (.011) Income -.025 (.019) .008 (.023) -.044 (.021) No. of observation 759 750 759 R-squared 0.2942 0.3533 0.1963 Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
30 (2.6) Indonesia
General Inst. Trust Trust in Partisan Institutions Trust in Neutral Institutions Intercept (Democratic Party) 2.198*** (.174) 2.023*** (.203) 2.287** (.192) Party ID GOLKAR .001 (.074) -.007 (.094) .003 (.072) PDIP-Struggle -.084 (.079) -.066 (.114) -.096 (.078) Religious Party1 .002 (.133) .055 (.192) .012 (.106) Other Parties -.178* (.083) -.250* (.114) -.136 (.079) No Party ID -.142* (.057) -.116 (.070) -.153* (.060) Social Capital Civic engagement -.013 (.070) .002 (.093) -.012 (.084) Social trust .130** (.040) .205*** (.042) .084 (.054) Govt. Performance Economy .129*** (.022) .162*** (.024) .110*** (.025) Anti-corruption .129*** (.022) .111*** (.029) .108*** (.026) News Consumption -.015 (.012) -.016 (.015) -.012 (.015) Socioeconomic Status Age .001 (.001) .0001 (.001) .001 (.001) Education -.003 (.009) -.014 (.012) .0005 (.009) Income -.061*** (.015) -.047* (.020) -.069*** (.017) No. of observation 1133 1131 1133 R-squared 0.1719 0.1614 0.1384 Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
31
Table 3. Summary of Regression Analyses of Trust in Individual Institutions
Trust in Partisan Institutions Trust in Neutral Institutions
Executive Office
National
Government Parliament Courts
Civil
Service Military The Police
Election Commission Main Opposition Party
Korea -.590*** -.199** -.083 -.255*** -.039 -.068 -.165* -.047 Taiwan -.628*** -.384*** -.078 -.166*** -.065 -.016 -.128* .061 Mongolia .574*** -.075 -.029 -.105 -.140* .053 -.024 -.166** The Philippines -.294* -.184 -.267** -.132 -.044 -.0004 -.186 -.202 Thailand -1.064*** -.678*** -.255* -.585*** .193 -.323* .194 -.461*** Indonesia -.212 .164 .022 .164 -.067 -.077 -.055 -.044 Other Parties Korea -.706*** -.306*** -.041 -.277*** -.034 -.135 -.095 -.167
Taiwan n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
Mongolia .060 -.229* -.323*** -.134 -.366*** -.087 -.049 -.162 The Philippines -.468** -.308* -.436*** -.178 -.195 -.052 -.207 -.291* Thailand -.726*** -.412** -.105 -.295 .161 .126 .241 -.131 Indonesia -.502*** -.047 -.202 -.081 -.272 -.200 -.073 -.025 No Party ID Korea -.284*** -.102 -.089 -.154** .035 -.057 -.107 -.036 Taiwan -.408*** -.242*** -.117* -.146** -.121* -.150** -.177*** -.060 Mongolia .140* -.101*** -.173* -.200** .256*** -.093 -.167* -.323*** The Philippines -.351** -.224* -.239* -.152 -.019 -.031 -.116 -.235* Thailand -.462*** -.240** -.007 -.156* .101 -.047 .175* -.009 Indonesia -.221** .014 -.137 -.079 -.238** -.230** -.129 -.050
Note: Only coefficients associated with party ID are shown; those associated with other variables are omitted. * p<.05; ** p<.01; *** <.001.
