Do People Trust the Government More? Unpacking the Distinct Impacts of Anticorruption Policies on Political Trust

Governments at times combat corruption intensively in an attempt to (re)gain political trust. While corruption crackdowns may demonstrate government resolve to fight corruption, the high-profile corruption uncovered may also shock the public. Therefore, how effective can anticorruption policies help boost political trust? We argue that anticorruption policies influence political trust through two channels: direct experience, that is, interactions with governmental bodies, and the media, that is, second-hand information culled from reporting on anticorruption. Differentiating between these two channels illustrates that anticorruption policies may have distinct effects on political trust for different social groups. We contextualize our theoretical framework with the latest anticorruption drive in China, combining longitudinal data from a national survey and field interviews and using difference-in-differences (DID) models. Our findings support our predictions. For state-system insiders (e.g., civil servants), increase of political trust is less pronounced than for outsiders because the former directly experience radical implementation processes and ineffective anticorruption outcomes. Similarly, political trust increases at a lower rate for groups with higher levels of education and greater access to information outside governmental propaganda than for their less-informed counterparts. Intensive anticorruption efforts are therefore more likely to increase political trust for the grassroots than for elites in China.