INEQUALITY AND POLITICAL TRUST IN INDONESIA
Total View This Week0
Total View This Week0
Institusion
Universitas Padjadjaran
Author
Hutagalung, Eldes Natalya
Subject
Datestamp
2021-11-23 00:00:00
Abstract :
Inequality is widespread concern, especially in established democracies. Numerous social and political consequences emerge as the result of the wide gap between the rich and the poor. On politics, some empirical studies have confirmed that higher inequality is associated with a decline of political trust, which it may hurt democracy legitimacy of a country. In a highly unequal society, poor citizens feel worse off and they likely judge that the government being unfair by treating the rich specially. They see that the government decisions mostly respond to upper income preferences. This concept is expected to be accentuated in the country with a higher level of inequality like Indonesia. Using cross sectional data at district level (kabupaten or kota), we aim to verify the negative effect of inequality on political trust. Unexpectedly, our result is not in accordance with previous studies. It shows that there is no evidence that inequality will likely dampen political trust level in Indonesia. The coefficients of inequality measurements are positive, implying that household in unequal district, on average, exhibits more trust in government. However, this study finds that the change in inequality itself has a negative effect on political trust. Comparing expenditure data in 2010 to in 2014, we demonstrate that the change of inequality whether it is decreasing or increasing determine how households trust their government.
Inequality is widespread concern, especially in established democracies. Numerous social and political consequences emerge as the result of the wide gap between the rich and the poor. On politics, some empirical studies have confirmed that higher inequality is associated with a decline of political trust, which it may hurt democracy legitimacy of a country. In a highly unequal society, poor citizens feel worse off and they likely judge that the government being unfair by treating the rich specially. They see that the government decisions mostly respond to upper income preferences. This concept is expected to be accentuated in the country with a higher level of inequality like Indonesia. Using cross sectional data at district level (kabupaten or kota), we aim to verify the negative effect of inequality on political trust. Unexpectedly, our result is not in accordance with previous studies. It shows that there is no evidence that inequality will likely dampen political trust level in Indonesia. The coefficients of inequality measurements are positive, implying that household in unequal district, on average, exhibits more trust in government. However, this study finds that the change in inequality itself has a negative effect on political trust. Comparing expenditure data in 2010 to in 2014, we demonstrate that the change of inequality whether it is decreasing or increasing determine how households trust their government.
Download
book
BibTex
Latex, Jabref
cloud_download
Original Resource
url resource Institution
