Trust at the Local versus Federal Level in Latin America

• In Event: Poster Session: New Perspectives in Political Science Research: Scholarship by Vanderbilt REU Students

Abstract

Political trust can be understood as a gap between expectation and reality. Citizens make subjective assessments on whether their representatives, institutions, or governments are producing outcomes that match their expectations. They assign trust based on the relative distance of government performance and their personal beliefs in what the government should be doing. Previous literature identifies a discrepancy between how constituents measure performance and create expectations for local and federal governments. Not only do citizens judge the levels of government differently, but they are predisposed to trust local government more. In this study, I adopt the framework of Wolak and Fitzgerald who find a tradeoff between poorly performing national institutions and increased trust in local government in Western Europe, and I apply this framework to Latin America. In Latin America, does trust in local government compensate for low trust in national government? In countries that report higher levels of trust, does the inverse occur? Using the AmericasBarometer, a nationally representative survey across the Americas and the Caribbean, I study perceptions of trust in national governments. I use regression analysis to test the relationship between trust in one’s local government and trust in the national government.

Author

• Mercer Sloane Janssen, UC Santa Barbara