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感吗？ 虽然我们经常听到公众对政府的评价很低，但我们对态度的结构或政治现实如何塑造对政府的信任感知之甚少。 本文考察了政治信任的态度成分，以及政府信任感与个人所处政治环境之间的联系。 本研究通过收集有关地方政治特征信息的市民对地方政府态度的原始调查数据，以及运用多层次分析技术，考察不同的政府结构和政治现实背景对市民政治态度的影响。本研究的主要目标是解决一个基本问题：什么类型的政府结构有助于提高公众对政府的信任？ 该项目开发和测试一种理论，将当地的政治特征与公民对政府的态度联系起来。 具体而言，周围的居民的政治特征被假定影响他们的政治结果，政治决策过程，以及在政府的人的评估。 反过来，这些评估预计将影响政治信任的态度。 通过从一系列地方收集有关地方政府结构（如选举形式和直接民主机制）和政治现实（如理事会多样性和党派竞争）的数据，并将这些信息与公民态度的措施相结合，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有关。 这项研究的结果提供了有关政府不信任的来源的辩论信息，以及深入了解背景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.