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Governance Innovations and Citizens’ Trust in Local Government: Electoral Impacts in China's Townships*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2014

DEYONG MA  and
ZHENGXU WANG
DEYONG MA
Affiliation:
Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
ZHENGXU WANG
Affiliation:
School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, [email protected]
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Abstract

We surveyed 2,221 rural residents in twenty towns across ten provinces in China. Structural equation models (SEM) found the quality of government, impartiality of institutions, and authoritarian values among citizens are the three main sources of citizens’ trust in local government. Among various types of recent institutional innovation and government reform, only a type that involves citizens in a formal electoral process, called ‘open nomination and direct election (ONDE)’, significantly improved trust in township-level government. Our models reveal that the movement of power to select local leaders from the hands of upper-level government to local residents erodes the influence of the so-called ‘traditional authority orientation’ among citizens, and enables them to assess trust level according to the competence of the government. Furthermore, elections reduce the trust-generating effect of institutional impartiality as citizens are enfranchised in the ‘input’ process of government, therefore emphasizing ‘outputs’ less.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 373 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This project is sponsored by European Commission's Marie Curie Fellowship Program (Contract No. 237580) and The Humanities and Social Science Programme 2013 of Ministry of Education, China (Project No. 13JYA630063).

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