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Citizens' Satisfaction with Government Performance in Six Asian-Pacific Giants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2010

ZHENGXU WANG
ZHENGXU WANG*
Affiliation:
Senior Research Fellow and Research Coordinator, China Policy Institute, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottinghamzhengxu.wang@nottingham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Assessment of the quality of governance has so far relied on socioeconomic statistics and expert opinions, while largely neglecting citizens’ perceptions. Using AsiaBarometer 2008 data, this paper examines the factors affecting citizens’ satisfaction with their government in six Asian-Pacific countries: America, Australia, China, India, Japan, and Russia. I found citizen satisfaction with the public services they receive, such as education, healthcare, and public safety, matters most in their assessment of government performance. Individual satisfaction with income, job, and housing also matters. The respondent will disapprove government performance if he or she thinks corruption is serious in government, or elected officials stop caring about citizens once voting is finished. In terms of macro variables, economic condition of a country seems to matters significantly. Especially, if a country's economy is growing fast, citizens are much more likely to be satisfied with government performance. Large within-country variations exist in countries such as China and India, where citizens of different cities or regions may give rather different assessments of government, suggesting many contextual variables not captured by this study. Lastly, citizens’ satisfaction with government performance seems to be highly divergent from international organizations’ evaluation of governance quality, such as the World Bank Governance Index. This raises both methodological and normative issues regarding the proper approaches to measuring good governance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , April 2010 , pp. 51 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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