What Are The Origins Of Political Trust?

Political trust can be regarded as an evaluative orientation of citizens toward their political system, it is the belief that the political system or some part of it will produce preferred outcomes even if left untended. It links ordinary citizens to the institutions that are intended to represent them. It is thus vital to good governance, legitimacy, the sustainability of the political system, and regime stability. In new democracies, a high level of political trust can facilitate democratic consolidation, and it is important because it is a component of political support that gives a political regime room to maneuver when it encounters difficulties in performing its more immediate political tasks.This research is trying to answer two questions on political trust, firstly, what is actual level of political trust in urban China? Secondly, what kinds of factors have an influence on political trust? In order to answer these two questions, quantitative methods have been used, and the relationship that exists between the variables have become to be the focal point. However at first, the concept of political trust needed to be defined. In this study we tried to understand political trust in broad sense, it can not be equated to the trust in government. Political trust means to be confident to political system, can be regarded as an evaluative orientation of citizens toward their political system based upon their normative expectations.It should contain the confidence of political institutions, the political policy and offices, these three denpent dimensions construct the structure of political trust.Based on recent finding, we mainly explored four kinds of factors that affect political trust. First is the individual factor, which include gender, age, income, education, career, party membership.Second is the social capital, which can be depart into two parts, social participation and interpersonal trust. Third is socio-cultural factor, universal trust and authoritarian are discussed in it. And the last factor is called institutional performance, which represent that trust is the expected utility of institutions performing satisfactorily.The data analyzed in this essay is the result of questionnaire survey in five major Chinese cities, which are Nanjing, Tianjin, Lanzhou, Shenzhen and Chongqing. This survey is conducted by the task group of Chinese credit institution construction in 2011. Several data analytical methods are used, including the basic frequency analysis, the factor analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. On the base of statistical findings, several conclusions can be found:Firstly, the level of political trust is not too low, and within it the confidence of political institution is higher than the other two parts. Trust in political officers is pretty low in urban China, and the trust in central government is much higher than in local government. Second, institutional performance and political culture both proved to be the origin of political trust. They show positive influence to three dimension of political trust.Third, social participation will affect political trust, but the influence is different in different parts. Political participation is an important way of increasing the level of political trust. Participate online affair as well as religious activities shows no effect on political trust at all. However the role of joining in formal organizations and usual personal activities should be more complicate.On the one hand, the usual activities can increase the level of trust on policy and institution, on the other hand joining in the organization will weaken individual’s confidence of political officer.Fourth, trust in other people can increase the level of political trust. When most people are considered to be credible, selfless and not utilitarian, the political trust will be in a high level.Finally, eduction and salary show negative influence in this study. People who has highly eduction and high level of income, will lose their trust in political system, and this is different from western society. Besides the membership of CCP has no connection to the trust in political institution and policy.