The Study Of Hierarchical Difference Of Trust In Government In The Wenchuan Earthquake Areas

The “5·12” earthquake 2008 happened in Wenchuan county has caused vast population death and property damaged.But on the other hand,this natural disaster have offer researchers an opportunity to observe the crisis management of Chinese governments,and this case is very representative.Thanks to the financial devotion and policies support,the past decades has witnessed great changes of earthquake areas.Theoretically speaking,these citizens in the earthquake areas should offer their support and trust to the government both the central government and local governments,but there seems not be the case.Actually,the general public in the Wenchuan earthquake areas show higher political trust to the central government,compared to these local governments.The causal mechanism in this social phenomena is a meaningful social science topic.This research try to dig out the mechanism of this issue.We collect qualitative data through deep interviews with people in the earthquake areas and analyze relating newspapers and recordings,and then this paper have some interesting findings.Firth of all,we find a “hierarchal structure” in it,that is to say,citizens in the earthquake areas show high political trust to the central government whereas lower political support to local governments,and what is more important is that the local governments may have supporting crisis to some extent.Secondly,this “hierarchal structure” could explained by culture factors of people in the earthquake areas,the local government's factors and the media agenda-setting and political propaganda.Through the citizens' perspective,this research argues that the political trust condition was shaped by the traditional authoritarianism and traditional culture,and the “guanxi” is the core of traditional culture.The local governments' governance flaw is the second factor of this trust structure.Basically speaking,the information gap about public policies between the local government and ordinary citizens could induce the distrust to the native government,and the native governments show incompetent when them facing disorders and interest dilemma.And then the political propaganda structure and media influence are the third factor.Technologically speaking,the propaganda structure is “hierarchal” as well,which means that the central government has advantages in agenda-setting.And the central government takes criticism to the local governments as a control method.The three factors were interlinked and interacted,therefore,we draw our conclusion based on the three factors and this paper advocates a “closed loop” theory as the mechanism of this “hierarchal structure”.Lastly,this research offer three policy suggestions to tackle this problem.Firstly,the local governance and the local servant's capacity should be improved,effective policy communication is needed during the process as well.Secondly,the central propaganda organizations should shift their focus to local good governance,and the local media must play critical role in the process of public policies communication.