Trust and Trustworthiness in National and Global Governance

学者和大众评论员普遍担心，公民越来越不信任政治家，对政治制度持怀疑态度，对民主进程和原则不再抱有幻想。人们认为，对政府的冷嘲热讽会削弱公民参与和传统形式的政治参与，减少对进步公共政策的支持，并为威权民粹主义力量提供氧气。如果公众的怀疑从核心治理机构向上蔓延，侵蚀了公民对自由民主表现甚至其核心理想的评价，那么民主倒退的风险就会被视为特别严重。一些人担心，衰落的公民文化可能会导致许多观察人士所认为的世界范围内自由民主的倒退。迄今为止，大多数研究都强调对信任的需求方解释：是什么让公民，比如他们的教育、阶级、态度或出生群体，让他们信任。本项目开发了一种理论上新颖、经验上雄心勃勃、方法上创新的方法，以理解对国家和全球治理机构的信任如何与可信赖性（以治理机构的绩效指标衡量）相关。我们确定了信任和可信赖度之间不匹配的两个主要危险；公民对真正服务于公众利益的仁慈行为者持怀疑态度，同时公民也天真地信任恶意行为者，比如腐败的领导人。相比之下，批判性公民理论认为，理想情况下，人们应该信任，但要验证可信赖性。大量证据对比了美国、欧洲和其他老牌自由民主国家的政治信任度。相比之下，我们将比较世界范围内更广泛的国家和政权类型。特别是威权政权、机构和领导人的加入，挑战了许多关于信任和可信赖性的传统理论和规范假设。我们还将重点分析一系列国家和全球政府机构（如联合国、世界银行、国际货币基金组织、世界贸易组织和北约，以及区域多边组织，如欧盟、美洲国家组织、欧安组织和非盟）之间的信任，这些机构在比较研究中得到的系统关注要少得多。各机构如何动员公众支持是一个高度实际和与政策相关的问题，本研究将对此作出贡献。为了进行我们的分析，我们将主要利用来自世界价值观调查/欧洲价值观调查（WVS/EVS）和欧洲晴雨表的大规模纵向和跨国调查数据，结合国家层面的绩效指数（包括专家调查）和个人层面对政权绩效的看法。我们将委托WVS/EVS进行更多的国家调查，优先考虑专制政权的实地调查，使我们能够在一系列背景下进行全球比较。以WVS/EVS为基础，将以相对较低的成本提供附加价值。我们的比较分析将结合整体和个人层面的分析，并将使用多层次的方法来理解嵌入在更广泛背景下的个体。我们还将使用焦点小组、调查和实验室实验。该项目还将试行衡量政治机构信任度的新问题。

There is widespread concern among scholars and popular commentators that citizens have grown more distrustful of politicians, sceptical about political institutions, and disillusioned with democratic processes and principles. Cynicism about government is thought to erode civic engagement and conventional forms of political participation, to reduce support for progressive public policies, and to provide the oxygen fuelling authoritarian-populist forces. The risks of democratic backsliding are regarded as particularly serious if public scepticism spreads upwards from core institutions of governance to corrode citizens' evaluations about the performance of liberal democracy and even its core ideals. Some fear a flagging civic culture may potentially contribute towards what many observers see as a liberal democratic retreat around the world. To date, most research has emphasised demand-side explanations of trust: what it is about citizens, like their education, class, attitudes, or cohort of birth, which makes them trusting. This project develops a theoretically novel, empirically ambitious and methodologically innovative approach to understanding how trust in agencies of national and global governance relates to trustworthiness, measured by performance indicators for governance agencies. We identify two primary dangers about any mismatch between trust and trustworthiness; where citizens are cynical about benevolent actors, which genuinely serve the public interest, and also where citizens naively trust malevolent actors, such as corrupt leaders. By contrast, the theory of critical citizens suggests that people should ideally trust but verify trustworthiness. The preponderance of evidence has compared political trust in the U.S., Europe and other established liberal democracies. By contrast, we will compare a far broader range of countries and types of regimes worldwide. The inclusion of authoritarian regimes, institutions and leaders, in particular, challenges many conventional theoretical and normative assumptions about trust and trustworthiness. We also will focus on analyzing trust across a range of national and global agencies of government (e.g. the UN, World Bank, IMF, WTO, and NATO, and regional multilateral organizations such as the EU, OAS, OSCE, and AU), which have received far less systematic attention in comparative research. How agencies might mobilize popular support is a highly practical and policy-relevant question, to which this study will contribute.To undertake our analysis, we will draw primarily upon large-scale longitudinal and cross-national survey data from the World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS/EVS) and Eurobarometer, combined with national-level performance indices (including expert surveys) and individual-level perceptions of regime performance. We will commission additional national surveys from the WVS/EVS, prioritising fieldwork in authoritarian regimes - enabling us to develop global comparisons across a range of contexts. Building on the WVS/EVS will provide added value at relatively low cost. Our comparative analysis will combine aggregate- and individual-level analysis, and will use multi-level methods to understand individuals embedded within broader contexts. We will also use focus groups and survey and lab experiments. The project will additionally pilot new questions for measuring trust in political institutions.