The Relationship of Political Trust and Government Performance

Theories of political trust and government performance developed simultaneously in the context of the functioning of democratic regimes and found a response in the features of democratization of authoritarian states. This study empirically examines the relationship between the two concepts in two modern types of regimes on generalized data. Segmented regression is used to model the relationship between variables in a sample of 75 states. It showing the levels of the gap in the effect of trust on the government performance in democracies and autocracies. Hypotheses about the positive effect of trust on the government performance in both regimes and the stronger effect of trust in democracies are confirmed. The study additionally reveals government performance from two sides - as a subjective and objective evaluation of its quality. The index of political trust and the index of government performance were constructed specifically for the study, which can be used in further studies.