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.
