Public confidence in government: empirical implications from a developing democracy

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0192512111417027

This article explores the determinants of confidence in the Turkish government. We question whether confidence-related questions in mass surveys tap specific support for the incumbent government or tap diffuse support for government as a democratic institution. For this purpose, sociocultural, performance, and party explanations are tested. Four waves of the World Values Survey for Turkey are used as the data set. The article finds that performance and party-based explanations are the most relevant. Turkish citizens place greater emphasis on 'government as the incumbent' rather than on 'government as a democratic institution'. The analysis also reveals the changing influences of both performance and party-based explanations across time, which points to the significance of context. Through a cross-country analysis, the viability of the findings in the Turkish case are evaluated against those of other developing democracies.