Local government performance: promoting trust in local government and reducing trust gap

This study elaborates the link between local government performance and the trust gap between higher trust in national government and lower trust in local government. The data in this paper come from China, which is characterised by an apparent trust gap between upper and lower government echelons. Ten national surveys are used for preliminary statistics, three of which are used for regression analysis and robustness testing. This paper finds that good local government performance can significantly increase trust in local government and thus narrow the trust gap between central and local government. In addition, by comparing the effect of cultural factors and local government performance on narrowing the trust gap, this paper finds a more critical role for local government performance. Therefore, in order to promote the balance of trust between national and local government, the focus should be particularly on improving local government performance.