FILSAFAT KORUPSI - Direktori File UPI

people were the primary beneficiaries. The Czechs and Slovaks were particularly likely to single out
politicians and officials while the Bulgarians and the Ukrainians emphasized the mafia. A majority
believe that politicians behaved worse at present than under Communism, and a somewhat smaller
number felt the same about the officials that they interact with on a day-to-day basis. Only in
Bulgaria did a majority see improvements (Miller, Grødeland, and Koshechkina 2001:56).
To gain a fuller understanding of the situation in the post-Communist countries one needs to
go ―beyond the traditional focus on citizens‘ trust in the government in general, ... [to study] the
causes and consequences of citizens‘ trust in specific political actors, organizations, or institutions
(Levi and Stoker, 2000:498-499).‖ Unfortunately, the New Democracies Barometers and the New
Russia Barometer simply ask people about their trust in various institutions without checking to be
sure that trust means the same thing to individuals in different countries.
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Nevertheless, whatever
their weaknesses, these survey do provide suggestive data on public attitudes.
The Barometer surveys indicate widespread skepticism about the trustworthiness of a range
of different professions and institutions both state and non-state. The list includes both major public
institutions such as ―parliament‖ and ―the president‖ and other groups with which the average
citizen will have had direct dealings such as the police and trade unions. People were asked to rank
institutions on a scale of 1 to 7 with 1 representing great distrust and 7 great trust. Thus the neutral
level is 4. Putting the 1998 answers from the New Democracies Barometer V and the Russian
Barometer VII together one sees some variation across countries and institutions (political parties
are at the low end everywhere and the military is at the high end), but, in general, most institutions
are below the median score (Table 1). About a quarter of the citizens in the survey were neutral
with a third expressing trust in institutions and less than one-half in the distrusting category (Mishler
and Rose, 1998: 13, 33; Rose and Haerpfer, 1998a: 59-63; an earlier survey is analyzed in Mishler
and Rose, 1997:422-427). Especially in Ukraine and Russia, a vicious cycle may be a real risk in
which distrust breeds more distrust, but that the ultimate outcome is by no means certain.
worse never rose above single digits in any country.
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In the 2000 Russian survey 52% think their influence has stayed the same while 19% think it has increased
and 28% think it has decreased (Rose, 2000:23). Thus there has been a fairly marked shift in favor of a
belief in political
empowerment. Once again, democratizing countries with more repressive old regimes show the biggest
perceived
improvement with 45% of Bulgarians and 61% of Romania seeing an improvement. The sense of stasis is
highest for the
former parts of the Soviet Union (Rose and Haerpfer, 1998a:56, Rose and Shin, 1998:19, Rose, 2000: 23).
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Levi and Stoker (2000: 499) criticize the New Democracies Barometers analyzed by Richard Rose and his
associates in this regard.
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Ukrainians and Russians express the lowest level of trust in political parties, the parliament and the
president among the nations surveyed. They are also particularly distrustful of private enterprise and
trade unions.
Table 1 here
However, some observers claim that trust in institutions is low in the United States and
Western Europe as well. In the United States trust in the federal government has fluctuated since
1958, but the overall trend is downward. Trust in government peaked at about 75% in 1966 and
reached a low of 20% in 1995. In 1999 it stood at about 40% (Levi and Stoker 2000: 478). Secular
declines in trust in government have been found for Sweden and Britain, but this is not true of all
other countries in the EU (Levi and Stoker 2000: 482-483, Rothstein, 2000). In spite of these
declines, trust in particular political and social institutions was much higher in Western Europe than
in Eastern Europe except for the military, and interpersonal trust was much lower in the post-