Performance Still Matters

• Author: Rosario Espinal,Jana Morgan Kelly,Jonathan Hartlyn
• Published date: 01 March 2006
• Date: 01 March 2006
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414005281933
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0010414005281933Comparative Political StudiesEspinal et al. / Performance Still Matters

Performance Still Matters

Explaining Trust in Government

in the Dominican Republic

Rosario Espinal

Temple University

Jonathan Hartlyn

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Jana Morgan Kelly

University of Tennessee at Knoxville

What explains low levels of trust in government institutions in democratizing

Latin American countries? The authors examine this question in the Domini-

can Republic, employing data from three surveys conducted over 1994 to

2001. Their analysis finds that trust in government institutions is shaped pri-

marily by perceptions of economic and political performance by government.

There is little evidence of a relationship between civic engagement and institu-

tional trust, and no relationship between democratic values and institutional

trust. They find a curvilinear effect between socioeconomic status and institu-

tional trust, with middle-sector groups significantly less trusting of govern-

ment institutions than either the poor or the wealthy.Age has a nonlinear effect

as older generations, who experienced authoritarianism as children, are con-

siderably more trusting of democratic institutions, contradicting predictions

by culturalist early-life socialization arguments. The authors conclude that low

trust per se is not the major challenge for governance.

Keywords: trust; government institutions; democracy

Trust in government institutions may be viewed as the central indicator of

the public’sunderlying feeling about its polity (Newton & Norris, 2000,

p. 53). In the United States and other industrialized democracies, there is

considerable evidence for a pervasive, if uneven, decline in popular confi-

dence in political institutions, though no evidence of a similar drop in the

commitment of the public to the principles of democracy or to democratic

regimes (Pharr & Putnam, 2000). Research seeking to understand the causes

for and implications of this sharp decline has pointed to several major fac-

200

Comparative Political Studies

Volume 39 Number 2

March 2006 200-223

© 2006 Sage Publications

10.1177/0010414005281933

http://cps.sagepub.com

hosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

tors. One strand has focused particularly on citizen perceptions of the eco-

nomic and political performance of government institutions (Evans &

Whitefield, 1995; Lipset & Schneider, 1987; Mishler & Rose, 2001). In turn,

other scholars have argued that observable declines in social capital and in

civic engagement in the United States help explain both declining levels of

political participation and levels of trust in governmentinstitutions (Putnam,

1995a, 2000), though this has been challenged by studies that have found

either a negative relationship between civic engagement and trust in institu-

tions (Brehm & Rahn, 1997) or little relationship between the two (Newton,

1999).

Latin America has been experiencing an unprecedented period of demo-

cratic rule. Yet, initially optimistic prognoses that democratic transitions

would be followed by successful democratic consolidation have increasingly

been replaced by more tempered analyses due to the region’s poor economic

and political performance and democratic fragility (Diamond, Hartlyn, &

Linz, 1999; Domínguez & Shifter, 2003). Public opinion survey research in

Latin America has provided evidence for high levels of dissatisfaction with

democracy and extremely low levelsof trust in government institutions, even

lower than those experienced in the United States or Europe (Bratton, 2002;

Corporación Latinobarómetro, 2002; Norris, 1999b, pp. 228-233; Payne,

Zovatto, Carillo Florez, & Allamand Zavala,2000, pp. 35-37). One review of

these data for Latin America concluded that disenchantment with democracy

and lack of confidence in key political institutions is more than just a reflec-

tion of poor economic times or dissatisfaction with policy outputs; rather, it

appears “rooted in a more basic disappointment” in how fundamental pro-

cesses, actors, and organizations of democratic systems in the region operate

(Payne et al., 2002, p. 37). Yet, few studies of the region have explored

directly the causes of low confidence in the institutions of democratic

government (see Lagos, 2001, 2003, and articles in Camp, 2001).

In this article, we explore alternativearguments regarding the factors that

best explain institutional trust in the context of the developing world by

examining data gathered in three national surveys conducted in the Domini-

can Republic. We find that views of government performance consistently

have the strongest impact on institutional trust but do not find that a basic dis-

appointment with democratic processes explains levels of institutional trust.

We see essentially no relationship between civic engagement and institu-

Espinal et al. / Performance Still Matters 201

Authors’Note: Weappreciate comments provided at presentations to the Compara-

tive Politics Discussion Group of the Universityof North Carolina at Chapel Hill and

to the Kellogg Center of the University of Notre Dame, as well as comments by the

reviewers for the journal. This research was funded in part through support provided

to Jonathan Hartlyn by the College of Arts & Sciences at his university.