Institutional Performance and Political Trust: New Evidence from China

• In Event: Trust and Public Opinion

Abstract

Comparative political scientists contend that political trust in Chinese society stems from institutional and cultural factors, but the strong correlations among these variables cause great difficulties in identifying the impact of institutional performance on political trust. This paper takes international students from China as cases, uses China’s neighboring countries as an instrumental variable, and studies the personal experiences of international students of China during the epidemic via two-stage least square regression analysis. The study finds that international students in China during the epidemic have significantly higher levels of epidemic prevention performance evaluation and political trust in China's central, provincial and municipal governments than those who went back to home countries during the epidemic. For international students in China, the early institutional performance and cultural factors are not enough to shape their political trust in the Chinese government, and the short-term economic and political performance are not closely related to their personal interests. Therefore, the formation of international students' political trust in China is more likely to come from the government's short-term epidemic prevention performance. The natural experimental design contributed by this paper resolves the endogenous concerns well in the field of political trust, provides strong empirical evidence for the impact of short-term institutional performance on political trust, and fills the gap in studying cross-cultural groups’ trust in Chinese political trust.

Authors

• Gang Wang, Ningbo University

• Kecheng Du, Wuhan University