Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Subnational Contextual Influences on Political Trust

政治信任的来源是什么？个人生活的政治环境能塑造他们对政府的信任吗？虽然我们经常听到公众对政府的低评价，但我们对态度的结构或政治现实如何影响对政府的信任却知之甚少。本文考察了政治信任的态度成分，以及政府信任的感受与个人生活的政治环境之间的联系。对这些关系的分析方法是：(1)收集有关地方政治特征信息的公民对地方政府态度的原始调查数据；(2)使用多层次分析技术来调查各种政府结构和政治现实所创造的背景如何影响居民的政治态度。本研究的主要目的是解决一个基本问题：什么样的政府结构有助于提高公众对政府的信任？这个项目发展并检验了一种将地方政治特征与公民对政府的态度联系起来的理论。具体而言，假设周围居民的政治特征会影响他们对政治结果、政治决策过程和政府人员的评估。预期这些评估反过来会影响政治信任的态度。通过收集来自一系列地方的地方政府结构（如选举形式和直接民主机制）和政治现实（如议会多样性和党派竞争）的数据，并将这些信息与公民态度的测量相结合，本文可以确定公民态度的变化如何与政治结构和现实的差异相关。这项研究的发现为关于政府不信任的来源的辩论提供了信息，并深入了解了上下文变量如何有助于理解个人层面的态度。

What are the sources of political trust? Can the political surroundings in which individuals live shape their feelings of trust in government? Although we hear much about the public's low opinion of the government, we understand little about the structure of the attitudes or how political realities work to shape feelings of trust in government. This dissertation examines the attitudinal components of political trust and the linkage between feelings of governmental trust and the political context in which individuals live. These relationships are analyzed by: (1) the collection of original survey data on citizen attitudes toward local governments on information on local political characteristics, and (2) the use of multi-level analytical techniques to investigate how the context created by various governmental structures and political realities affect the political attitudes of residents. The primary objective of this research is to address a basic question: what types of governmental structures serve to enhance public trust in government? This project develops and tests a theory that links local political characteristics to citizen attitudes toward government. Specifically, the political characteristics surrounding residents are posited to affect their assessments of political outcomes, the political decision-making process, and the people in government. These assessments, in turn, are expected to influence attitudes of political trust. By gathering data on local governmental structures (such as election form and direct democratic mechanisms) and political realities (such as council diversity and partisan competition) from a range of localities, and merging this information with measures of citizen attitudes, the dissertation can determine how variation in citizen attitudes relates to differences in political structures and realities. Findings from this research provide information to the debate about the sources of governmental mistrust as well as insight into how contextual variables can contribute to an understanding of individual-level attitudes.