"Trust me, I'm from the government": the complex relationship between trust in government and quality of governance.

• Author: Killerby, Paul
• Position: Policy Papers

Abstract

A comparative analysis of data for a sample of 45 countries illustrates that trust in government does not have a statistically significant correlation with any of a variety of other key policy objectives. The evidence suggests that trust in government is a poor indicator of the level of social trust in each country, its contribution to overall life satisfaction is at best indirect, and it is a poor indicator of quality of governance. Further research is recommended to clarify the value of trust in government and its relationship to other key policy objectives. This paper reinforces Wansbrough's (2002) advice that trust in government is a complex concept. In particular, it observes that trust in government is a form of fiduciary trust between society and government (i.e. a principal-agent relationship), which is inherently different from mutual trust between people. The evidence illustrates that measured levels of trust in government are not the same as, or even necessarily indicative of, quality of governance.

INTRODUCTION

Trust in government measurably declined throughout the developed world during the second half of the 20th century (Crozier et al. 1975, Pharr and Putnam 2000). According to Wansbrough (2002:2):

Political scientists are concerned that the decline in trust in government may represent a decline in social capital, an impediment to the ability of government to function, or even a fundamental crisis in democracy. In the words of Ryan (2000):

If governments and the institutions associated with government lose popular legitimacy, the capacity of systems of government to command authority, especially through voluntary compliance, may be under threat. The restoration of trust in government has recently been elevated to the status of key government objective in several developed nations, including the United Kingdom (Mulgan 2003), Canada (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat 2002, Zussman 2003) and New Zealand (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2003). According to Annex One of New Zealand's strategic framework, the Sustainable Development Programme of Action 2003, the New Zealand Government aims to maintain trust in government by:

* working in partnerships with communities

* providing strong social services for all, building safe communities and promoting community development

* keeping faith with the electorate

* working constructively in Parliament

* promoting a strong and effective public service (p.30).

In simple terms, the New Zealand Government aims to promote trust in government by providing good governance. This goal was recently reinforced by a State Services development target that by June 2010 there will be a measurable improvement in New Zealanders' trust in government agencies (State Services Commission 2005).

This paper explores the hypothesis that trust in government is related to quality of governance and a selection of other key policy goals. Evidence is presented that trust in government is not statistically correlated with other selected goals, using cross-country data from the World Values Survey. (3) The paper concludes with a discussion on the complex relationship between trust in government and quality of governance.

METHODOLOGY

In order to test the relationship between trust in government and a range of key indicators of public value--defined simply as "what the public values" (Mulgan 2003)--the following variables are compiled from cross-country data sets as summarised in Table 1 and described overleaf. (4)

Measuring Trust in Government

Trust in government is an abstract concept that underlies a complex array of relationships, including trust in the police, members of parliament, the regulatory environment, legal system, civil servants, government-provided services etc. The method used to quantify trust in government should therefore account for this abstract nature. This paper estimates country-level scores for trust in government using the factor analysis method, thus explicitly assuming that trust in government is a latent variable. (5) Factor analysis is a commonly used method in the fields of sociology and psychology, for example, to measure intelligence quotient (IQ) scores from test results.

Indicators of confidence (trust) in various dimensions of the institutional environment are compiled from results of the 1995-1997 wave of the World Values Survey (Inglehart et al. 2000). Following Knack and Keefer (1997) data are derived for the question: "I am going to name a number of organisations. For each one, could you tell me how much confidence you have in them: is it a great deal of confidence, quite a lot of confidence, not very much confidence or none at all?" indicators compiled for this paper relate to the percentage of respondents with either a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the armed forces, the legal system, the police, the government, political parties, parliament and the civil service. Data are compiled from the worldvaluessurvey.org website (see Appendix One for the list of countries covered).

A variable called GOVTRUST is calculated from factor analysis of the seven items above, using the principal component method. This assumes the existence of an underlying latent variable (GOVTRUST), which is imperfectly approximated by each of the indicators of trust in government. In other words, GOVTRUST is an estimate of the level of abstract trust in government for each country in the sample. The variable GOVTRUST has a range from approximately 2.5 to -2.5. The highest values of GOVTRUST are in Bangladesh (2.1), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1.8) and Norway (1.6), while the lowest are in the Dominican Republic (-2.4), Argentina (-1.9) and Peru (-1.8).

FINDINGS REGARDING TRUST IN GOVERNMENT AND SOCIAL TRUST

In parallel with the recent rise of academic and policy interest in trust in government, there has been an increased focus oil such concepts as good governance (e.g. Petrie 2002, Kaufmann et al. 2004), governmental social capital (e.g. Knack 1999, Ahn and Hemming 2000), linking social capital (e.g. Woolcock 2001, Harper 2002) and social capital infrastructure (e.g. Warner 2001). This interest arises from a growing consensus amongst World Bank and OECD economists that quality of governance and social capital are each crucial and interrelated for achieving a path towards economic growth and sustainable development (e.g. Collier 1998).

Social capital is defined as "... networks together with shared norms, values and understandings that facilitate co-operation within or among groups" (Cote and Healy 2001:41). (6) Social capital is a latent form of collective action, an intangible stock of norms and networks that defines the limits of cooperation in a society, community or group. Many policy makers view social capital as a...