Social Trust in Contemporary Rural China: Its Sources and Impacts on Public Goods Provision

Social trust, as an essential element of political culture, is assumed to strongly affect the effectiveness of political institution. However, such studies in non-democratic settings are scarce, and even scarcer in the Chinese context. This dissertation, using data drawn from an original survey in rural China, examines the extent, sociopolitical origins, and political consequences of social trust in China. The results suggest that China has a unique pattern of social trust owing to its dual Confucian and Communist heritages. While trusts in relatives, neighbors, kinsman, and other villagers (i.e., particularized trust) are extensive, trust in strangers (generalized trust) is scarce. Using multilevel level analysis, this dissertation finds that both personal traits and village attributes help to explain the distributions of social trust in rural China. Finally, contrary to the common beliefs, this dissertation finds that variations in public goods provision in rural China can be best explained by particularized trust, but not generalized trust

Does decentralisation bring the people back to the government? An empirical analysis of the effect of decentralisation on political trust

This study offers an empirical test of the effect of decentralisation on political trust. A comparative analysis of citizens in 47 countries suggests indirect and heterogeneous consequences of decentralisation. First, while various dimensions of decentralisation are significantly associated with political trust at the country level, no dimension has a direct effect on political trust at the individual level. Second, not all forms of decentralisation contribute to the promotion of political trust. And, finally, two dimensions of decentralisation (that is, fiscal and administrative) promote political trust through reducing the negative effect of democratic values

Contextualizing the economic basis of political support : government economic engagement, economic perceptions, and democratic satisfaction

Citizens extend their support to the government based on their evaluation of the government’s economic performance. Yet, inadequate attention has been paid to how the economic roles of the government influence the economic basis of government support. We argue that the extent to which the government is engaged in the economy determines how people attribute economic success or failure to the government and thus moderates the effect of economic perceptions. Focusing on one widely researched measurement of political support in a democratic setting, democratic satisfaction, we analyze the moderating effect of government economic engagement on the effect of economic perceptions among eighteen Latin American democracies. A consistent finding yielded in our study is that with a higher level of economic engagement of the government, there is a stronger association between the perceptions of economic conditions and citizens’ satisfaction with democracy

我国政商关系中的双重嵌入及其解释 : 基于沿海五省私营企业的实证研究

This study intends to examine the government-business relationship in China. Drawing on the concept of embeddedness, this study argues that given the particular reform environments, Chinese private entrepreneurs are face “double-embeddedness”: a government-driven political embeddedness and a market-driven economic embeddedness. Based on data from a five-province survey of private entrepreneurs, we find the survey enterprises vary significantly across these two forms of embeddedness, and they seem to complement each other. Generally, large private enterprises and entrepreneurs who had worked in government tend have higher levels of political embeddedness

Social trust and grassroots governance in rural China

The relationship between social trust and governance has been one of the focal points of the academic and policy-making communities. Empirical studies on this relationship, however, have focused mostly on democracies. The scarcity of such studies in authoritarian countries has left many important questions unanswered: Is social trust associated with effective governance only in democratic settings? Can social trust improve the quality of governance in non-democracies as well? Drawing on data from 2005 China General Social Survey—a representative survey conducted nationwide at both the individual- and village-level in rural China, this paper attempts to answer these questions empirically by examining the relationship between social trust and the quality of governance in rural China. The findings reveal that different types of social trust—particularized trust and generalized trust—correspond with different effects in rural governance: whereas villagers’ trust in people whom they knew personally was positively and significantly associated with the provision of various public goods and services, their trust in strangers had virtually no impact on rural governance

Creating democratic citizens? The political effects of the Internet in China

This study explores the perplexing role of the Internet in authoritarian settings. We disentangle the political impact of the Internet along two distinct dimensions, indirect effects and direct effects. While the direct effects of the exposure to the Internet shape political attitudes in a manifest and immediate way, the indirect effects shape various political outcomes via instilling fundamental democratic orientations among citizens. In authoritarian societies such as China, we argue the indirect effects of the Internet as a value changer tend to be potent, transformative and persistent. But the direct effects of the Internet as a mere alternative messenger are likely to be markedly contingent. Relying on the newly developed method of causal mediation analysis and applying the method to data from a recent survey conducted in Beijing, we find strong empirical evidence to support our argument on the two-dimensional impacts of the Internet on authoritarian nations

Institutionalizing from the middle : understanding provincial legislation and grassroots democracy in China

Nominal democratic institutions under non-democratic regimes vary across countries. This study intends to advance our understanding of such nominal democratic institutions by exploring the role of one aspect of the regime, government hierarchy. Focusing on the village-level democratization in China, we stress the intermediary role of the provincial-level governments in shaping the variant outcomes of grassroots democracy across the country. Through an analysis of a national sample, we find that divergent provincial legislative interpretation of central policies is a key determinant of the access to power and democratic governance of village-level governments. Our finding suggests that authoritarian states can employ various institutions to gather more accurate information, accommodate local variations, contain potential intra-government disagreement and thus maintain regime stability

Contingent instrumental and intrinsic support : exploring regime support in Asia

This study presents a contextual explanation of regime support by arguing that although an individual’s instrumental economic calculation and intrinsic democratic value are important predictors of political support, the extent to which they matter is contingent on the nature of the regime, as defined primarily by democracy. Using data drawn from the second wave of the Asia Barometer (ABS), we find that economic perceptions are less important for regime support in democratic countries than they are in authoritarian countries, and an affection for democracy makes people more critical of the political system in authoritarian countries than in democratic countries

Parsing the effect of the internet on regime support in China

Although the Internet is severely censored in China, the negative reporting and critical deliberations of political institutions and policy issues, especially those low-profile ones, have been abundant in the cyberspace. Given such a mixed pattern of online information, this study aims to investigate the complex effect of the Internet on regime support in China by parsing it into direct effect and indirect effect. It argues that the Internet erodes its viewers' overall support for the authoritarian regime indirectly by decreasing their evaluation of government performance. The findings from a mediation analysis of a Beijing sample support this argument. The result of one analysis also indicates that the direct effect of the Internet use on regime support can be positive. Such findings about the complex effect of the Internet help advance our understanding of both political and theoretical implications of the diffusion of the Internet in authoritarian countries

Is a "silent revolution" in the making in China? Postmaterialist values, and political attitudes and behavior

Five decades ago, Inglehart for the first time described and explained an unprecedented transformation of political cultures in advanced industrial societies, which he called the "silent revolution."It was characterized by the emergence in those countries of postmaterialist values as the result of a sustained period of economic growth, and the profound impact of those values on people's political attitudes and behavior. As China has experienced extraordinary economic growth in the past several decades, has such a "silent revolution"happened there? The answer to this question has been far from complete or clear. Using three longitudinal, cross-sectional national surveys, we find that while the current level of postmaterialist values in China remains relatively low, such values have flourished among younger people, and those values do shape political attitudes and behavior