Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan

Political trust is the belief that the political system or some part of it will produce preferred outcomes even if left untended. As a sentiment of outputs and performance in the short run, political trust is one of the important determinants of a polity's stability.1 Political trust is important because it is a component of political support that gives a political regime room to maneuver when it encounters difficulties in performing its more immediate political tasks. From the rational choice perspective, political trust can be explained by political actors' calculation of material interests.2 This theory does not deny that values and norms can play a role in shaping people's choices, but it does not give them independent status.3 Rational choice studies of political trust have focused largely on the behavior of governments. They have found that political trust depends on the ability of governments to provide people with policy and access and on the perception of government officials as good men or women.4 In contrast to rational choice theory, culturalists argue that short-run calculations of material interest tell only part of the story. Political actors respond to stimuli, not directly, but rather through a mediating orientation that assigns meanings and values to events.5 Differences in mediating orientation can make political actors respond to the same stimuli in different ways. Culturalists do not deny that people's orientations are shaped by institutions and that institutional changes will eventually lead to changes in orientations. However, changes in political culture usually lag behind changes in institutions, instead of changing in tandem with them. Consequently, people's orientations can affect their behavior independently. Their effects can not be reduced to the influence of institutions.6 A study of the impact of culture on political trust in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan can test cultural theory. Data gathered from these two societies in 1993 illustrate the effects of political culture on people's attitudes towards government. By decomposing the impact of structure, institutions, and culture, it is possible to examine if cultural effects can be reduced to structures or institutions as suggested by modernization and institutional theorists.