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The trend and factors of public trust in the military in Taiwan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2025

Tse-hsin Chen Open the ORCID record for Tse-hsin Chen [Opens in a new window]
Tse-hsin Chen*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Administration and Policy, National Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Political trust, which signifies the belief in the responsible exercise of power by political institutions, is a fundamental prerequisite for democratic legitimacy. However, even amidst a democratic deficit, the public's trust in the military can remain firm. This study aims to illuminate the prevailing trend and potential factors influencing public trust in the military in Taiwan from 2001 to 2022. The trajectory of trust in Taiwan's military implies fluctuating trust levels in response to the varying intensity of external threats. However, in general, confidence in the armed forces remains higher than that in other political institutions, a trend that is also observed in other nations. The statistical evidence demonstrates substantial support for both cultural and institutional explanations of political trust in the military in Taiwan throughout the initial two decades of the twenty-first century. However, the institutional explanation appears to be more robust than the cultural explanation. Notably, statistical results on trust in the government are consistent across all six survey rounds, with institutional factors showing higher overall significance in the pooled dataset compared to cultural factors, thereby emphasizing the institutional perspective.

Keywords

civil–military relationscultural explanationsdemocratic governancepartial proportional odds modelpolitical trust
Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 2024 , pp. 162 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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