事与愿违：财政支出导向与政治信任

Unintended Results:Orientation of Fiscal Expenditure and Political Trust

改革开放以来较为单一的政治合法性来源以及经济高速增长而不断积累的社会矛盾,使得我国面临日益严重的"合法性困境"。既存的有关中国政治信任的经验研究基本上是在个体的层面上探讨,本文则运用2010年中国社会综合调查的"主观"数据与相关地方财政收支的"客观"数据,在多层次上探讨中国公众政治信任的影响因素。在个体层面上,我们的发现与既有文献基本一致,即城市居民、高收入群体、人际信任度更高、互联网使用更为频繁的公众会更加不信任政治机构,而自由民主价值观较弱的负作用与传统社会价值观较强的正效应并存于大陆公众之中。在跨省层次上,我们发现地方财政的再分配支出加强公众的政治信任度,而发展性支出则在一定程度上削弱了公共的政治信任度。这一发现表明,经济发展本身非但不足以为政权提供合法性,甚至构成其"合法性困境"的来源之一;国家应通过提供更多的再分配公共物品和高质量的"政治公共物品"以提高公众政治信任。

The relatively single source of political legitimacy,plus the social contradictions accumulated along with high-speed economic growth,have put our country in the face of'the predicament of legitimacy'.So far,empirical studies of political credibility in China have been conducted on the individual level.This paper,based on the database of CGSS 2010 and related data of local fiscal revenue and expenditure,attempts to study on multiple levels the factors influencing public political trust in China.Our findings show that,on the individual level,urban residents,the high-income group,those with high interpersonal trustworthiness,and those who have better access to the Internet tend to have lower trust for political organs,and the negative function of weaker values for freedom and democracy coexists with the positive effect of traditional social values.On the provincial level,we find that redistributional expenditure increases public political trust,whereas developmental expenditure weakens it.All these findings indicate that economic development itself cannot provide the source of political legitimacy for the existing power,rather it is more likely causing the'predicament of legitimacy'.The state is advised to provide more redistributional common goods and high-quality'political common goods'in order to increase its public political credibility.