地方领导性别与民众清廉感知:基于中国城市的实证研究

Female Political Leaders and Popular Perception of Corruption:An Empirical Study Based on Chinese Cities

本文从地方领导性别的视角出发,引入代表性官僚理论,揭示了女性地方领导提升民众清廉感知的作用机理。作者对2015年"中国城乡社会治理调查"与城市主政领导背景信息数据进行匹配分析,发现女性在本地担任领导职务显著提升了当地居民对地方政府清廉程度的感知。进而,女性地方领导对民众清廉感知的提升作用主要体现在女性居民中,在男性居民中并不显著。本文还检验了女性地方领导提升民众清廉感知的中介机制。研究发现,女性地方领导提高女性民众政治信任为主要中介机制。本文的研究结论有助于深入理解女性领导者在腐败治理领域发挥社会影响力的内在逻辑。

From the perspective of political leader gender,this paper introduces the representative bureaucracy theory and reveals the causal mechanism underlying the effect of female leaders on corruption perception among citizens.Using the 2015 China Social Governance Survey and the background information data of city leaders,the analysis shows that female political elites significantly reduce citizens’corruption perception.The study further indicates that perceived corruption decreases among female citizens,however,the effect of female political leaders is insignificant among male citizens.This paper also disentangles three mediation mechanisms for the impact of female political leaders.We find that improving the political trust of female citizens is the main mediation mechanism linking female leaders and corruption perception of female citizens.This research enhances our understanding of the internal logic that drives the social influence of female political leaders in corruption governance.