Abstract
Motivation
Most studies on the normative roots of political trust argue for its relationship with policy performance rather than with cultural orientation. The article analyses how institutional trust can be affected by both policy performance and cultural orientation in Bangladesh and Nepal.
Purpose
To revisit the relationship between citizens’ cultural orientation and institutional trust and whether this could explain why institutional trust is high in Bangladesh and Nepal despite poor policy performance.
Approach and Methods
The study is based on a country representative survey (Governance and Trust Survey 2) in Bangladesh and Nepal, countries where hierarchy is embedded in the social fabric.
Findings
Employing authoritarian cultural orientation (ACO), we found empirical support for the assumption that despite poor policy performance and poor governance, higher ACO can lead citizens to have greater trust in public institutions. People’s submissiveness to the country’s authorities due to ACO can obstruct their critical thinking and even create positive impressions of the authorities, which in turn may generate higher institutional trust. The study also found that the institutions that are more visible and exert more authority may attract greater trust among citizens who have ACO.
Policy implications
Institutional trust may not always reflect policy performance, which is why using trust as a proxy for measuring policy performance may be problematic as it may have different roots. In any initiative to assess citizens’ perceptions on policy performance, the cultural orientations must be considered.