Governance,Public Service Delivery and Trust in Government

Abstract

Several studies in the past show that the work done by the incumbent government helps the ruling party to get re-elected. However, most of these studies focus on re-election and do not look at the impact assessment of governance on trust in government, which is a precursor of re-election. To fill this gap, this article explores whether perceptions of good governance lead to trust in government. The results support the view that governance at the state level leads to a higher trust with the state government. Of all the variables used to measure governance as access, benefitting from welfare schemes had the maximum impact on trust. Other governance measures like availing public services and citizens’ interaction with the state too had a positive relationship with trust in the state government. Furthermore, having the same government at the centre and the state, strengthened one’s trust in the state government.

Keywords

Governance as access trust service delivery state–citizen interaction

Introduction

One of the most important channels of interaction between the state and its citizens is through governance mechanisms. Governance further enhances trust in the government. On the one hand, the government, in order to fulfill its responsibilities, makes citizen-centric policies, implements them and seeks to provide public services to its people. On the other hand, the citizens avail the benefits of these schemes and access public services. In times of need, they approach various institutions, both state and non-state, for their work (Sekhri, 2011). However, citizens from different socio-economic backgrounds envisage different roles for the state—some see it as a provider and others as a facilitator. For the marginalized (both socially and economically), accessing the state for basic needs and services remains the only choice, unlike other citizens who can avail these services without hardships, by other means. Past studies in India have indicated that people generally assign a lot of importance to medical facilities, drinking water, roads, electricity and education (Chhibber et al., 2004) and believe that the government should bear exclusive responsibility for these public goods. In such a scenario, the responsiveness of the democratic state is critical for giving an empirical meaning to the ‘idea’ of democracy that the citizens uphold and cherish (Shastri, 2019a) and embedding their trust in the state.

This article provides an overview of governance ‘as access’ (Figure 1) in relation to efficiency (how effectively the state implements welfare schemes), responsiveness (access to public services) and approachability (citizens approach various institutions for their work and settling disputes). In doing so, the article looks into the proportion of beneficiaries of the schemes that are provided by the state governments. It also taps into the experiences of the citizens in availing these services and makes an assessment of whether there is any state-level variations in implementing the schemes. It also looks at the kinds of institutions people approach for dispute settlement and getting their work done. Finally, we try to see whether positive perceptions of governance increase people’s trust in the state government.

Figure 1.

Source: The authors.

This article follows the following structure: after the introductory section, the second segment outlines the trends evidenced from various existing literature on the theme of governance (state performance) and trust and lays out the major hypothesis. In the third section, the data and the variables used with their descriptive statistics are discussed. The fourth section provides the basic findings and also focuses on the multivariate analysis. In the fifth and final section, the major conclusions are outlined and the findings flowing from the data analysis are discussed, offering possible explanations for the same.

Trends Emerging from Current Literature

Governance is a multifaceted concept, encompassing all aspects of the exercises of authority, through formal and informal institutions, in the management and distribution of the resources of the state. The quality of governance is thus determined by the impact of this exercise of power on the quality of life enjoyed by its citizens (Huther & Shah, 1998, p. 40). Governance as a term was initially used during the Cold War by the West to manage the unequal relationship between donors and recipients of aid to promote democracy and market reforms as an alternative to the Soviet model. During that time, the thrust of governance was on economic freedom that included transparency, accountability, responsiveness, efficiency and the like (Shastri, 2019c). However, in the 1990s, the scope of the term governance was widened to include the idea of protection of human rights. This resulted in an increased interest in governance as a strategy to redefine its role in society.

There is an abundance of literature available on governance and its impact on vote choice. If the government in power is able to satisfactorily deliver social and economic goods to its citizens, its legitimacy remains unchallenged; if it fails to do so, its authority declines (Attri & Jain, 2019; Deshpande et al., 2019; Mishra & Attri, 2019; Suri & Kailash, 2014; Tillin et al., 2015; Virmani, 2004; Yadav & Palshikar, 2009). However, governance not only favours the incumbent but could also result in building trust in favour of the government, which could be a precursor to the re-election of the incumbent. The following section discusses the available literature on governance and trust and also focuses various indicators used to measure governance.

Governance and Trust in Government

The interaction between citizens and the state is a crucial factor impacting trust in government. Under tight fiscal constraints and growing expectations, governments are increasingly reaching out to citizens to ensure quality, responsiveness and, ultimately, trust in public services.

Performance measurement can improve citizens’ trust in government directly through their participation in the evaluation process or indirectly by improving citizens’ perceptions of government performance (Yang & Holzer, 2006). The performance theory of trust in government examines the relation between performance at the macro and micro levels. The former deals with the quality of, or the perception of, government service delivery, and the latter deals with the macroeconomic situation such as level of inflation, unemployment and economic growth (Bouckaert & Van de Walle, 2001). Bjørnskov (2010) focused on the quality of countries’ ‘governance’ and its impact on ‘economic growth’ (p. 323). In a larger sense, the quality of governance and public service delivery can affect economic growth through its impact on human capital, poverty, inequality and corruption, which in a way shapes citizens’ perception towards the governments and impacts trust in them. However, in the era of private investment, ‘governance’ became the scale for evaluating investment-friendly destinations and economists like Hirst (2000) and public administration scholars like Peters (2000) drew attention to the institutional framework of laws, social institutions and values besides markets (Shastri, 2019c). In a developing nation like India, the popularity of the government among the lower classes depends not merely on the growth rates of the economy that has been achieved by a government or how it manages the security situation but rather on the welfare schemes it implements and how the benefits of these schemes are actually delivered to the needy (Suri & Kailash, 2014).

The states having greater citizens’ trust can operate more efficiently, effectively and smoothly than those with low trust. In order to build public trust, it has become significant for the government to be more vigilant, especially for law and the public interest and trust building is both the result and the determinant of inclusive governance (Cheema, 2010). Citizens are more likely to have trust in public officials, politicians and political institutions when governance is more effective and democratic and approach these institutions. It is in this context that many scholars (Cheema, 2010; Salminen & Ikola-Norrbacka, 2010) considered governance as one of the most effective ways to address the needs of the people and also benefit the entire community. In their work, Bowler and Donovan (2002) found that democratic governance can motivate citizens to have more positive attitudes about their abilities to influence the political system, and how the government responds to them. Malena et al. (2004) argue that social accountability mechanisms¹ could improve governance through better service delivery and empowerment. They define social accountability as an approach that relies on civic engagement, that is, in which it is the citizens and/or civil society organizations that participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability.

As stated earlier, trust in government is a result of good governance and may be built up with sound policies (Yousaf et al., 2016; Popovski, 2010; Salminen & Ikola-Norrbacka, 2010 as cited in Beshi & Kaur, 2020). On the other hand, Christensen and Laegreid (2005) link improved performance in public services to trust in government and distrust to poor performance. They also highlight that a high level of trust in one institution tends to extend to other institutions as well, and trust in government is also influenced by demographic factors, such as age, education and occupation. In fact, citizens view government’s performance not only from the perspective of service delivery but also from the efficacy and fairness of government policy and government ethics (Yang & Holzer, 2006). As a basis of good governance, integrity, transparency and accountability in public administration are the prerequisite to strengthen public trust (Cheema, 2010; Kim, 2005).

An increase in the quality of public service delivery can also lead to increased satisfaction of citizens with the government and hence, in turn, increased trust in it (Van de Walle et al., 2002). Though trust is both perceived as a precondition for, and a result of, good governance, in this article, we attempt to test a one-directional relation only and argue that effective governance enhances trust in state governments, which in turn are influenced by various factors such as efficiency and effectiveness, responsibility, integrity and accountability, openness, participation and transparency (Kim, 2005; Osemeke & Osemeke, 2017).

Measuring Governance

Various studies have come up with different components to measure governance. Huther and Shah (1998) proposed a method to construct an index of governance quality for a sample of 80 countries. They used several component indices to capture four different indicators—citizen participation, government orientation, social development and economic management—to compute an index for ranking and grouping the countries into good governance, fair governance and poor governance categories. Kaufmann et al. (2003) in their work aggregated different dimensions of governance on the basis of six governance concepts: voice and accountability, political stability and violence, government effectiveness, regulatory burden, rule of law and graft. They then examined the association between each of the six indicators and three development outcomes: per capita income, infant mortality and adult literacy (Basu, 2002). Iwu-egwuonwu (2011) focused on the behavioural aspects of governance, which looked into accountability, justice, transparency, genuine disclosures, integrity and high performance. There are other scholars who looked at governance in terms of equity, efficiency, sustainability, transparency, accountability and security (Khan, 2013; Kefela, 2011 cited in Osemeke & Osemeke, 2017). Mundle et al. (2012) in their work used infrastructural service delivery, social service delivery, fiscal performance, law and order, judicial service delivery and quality of legislature as the indicators to measure governance.

However, some scholars have pointed out to measurement problems related to governance (Kaufmann & Kray, 2008; Thomas, 2009) and directed towards the uncertainty in defining terms like ‘democratic accountability’, ‘governmental effectiveness’, ‘rule of law’ and ‘corruption’. Additionally, there is a lack of a linkage between the way concepts are defined in literature and how they are used by various measurement indices. Furthermore, there is more focus on ‘access’ and not on the quality of governance imparted. It also does not take into account the speed and efficiency of these services, whether there is absence of corruption, efficiency in service delivery in terms of time taken and the outcome achieved, and citizens’ satisfaction with the kind of governance offered, etc. (Canache et al., 2001).

In an attempt to respond to the criticisms and limitations in the existing indicators, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI)-directed World Governance Survey made a distinction between performance and process indicators and focused on six issues, which included accountability, transparency, efficiency, decency, fairness and participation in six arenas such as civil society, political society, government, bureaucracy, economic society and judiciary. There is now greater importance given to how a country compares with its own past and not how it compares with others.

Also, as the existing governance indicators were neither gender-sensitive nor pro-poor, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP’s) pro-poor and pro-gender governance indicators were an attempt at getting over the limitations of the earlier generation of governance indicators. It recognized that due to their different gender roles and the impact of gender stereotypes, women and men are also likely to have different perspectives and different experiences in many areas of governance. The core elements of the concept of governance recognize that different groups within society often have competing interests and different needs. It further highlights that though not all gender-sensitive indicators are pro-poor, all pro-poor indicators should be gender-sensitive (Corner, 2005).

Measuring the quality of governance is, thus, extremely challenging as governance is a very complex multidimensional phenomenon, even in its narrow, statist interpretation. Every dimension could have several additional sub-dimensions, each represented by one or more different variables (Mundle et al., 2012). Shastri (2019c) has suggested that in the current scenario, it is necessary to revisit the idea of democratic governance by tracing the two concerns not as distinct but as integral to the democratic project—governance is democratic or it is not effective governance. In his work, Shastri (2019c) traces the governance record of the Government of Karnataka and argues that ‘access’ is the central theme in governance. The author identifies three dimensions of access—(a) Ideological dimension: normative acceptance of the right to access; (b) Institutional dimension: the establishment of appropriate organizational structures to ensure access and (c) Empirical dimension: the actual practice of access. Where many might have argued that the ideal measure of governance is in terms of the policies, priorities and programmes that an administration adopts, Shastri argues that the true measure of governance is in the results and perception of those for whom that governance is meant for. He argues that access is the right theme to integrate the concerns of democracy and governance because access obtains at the intersection of responsiveness and efficiency.

In this article, we attempt to measure ‘governance as access’. We use three indicators to measure governance as access—efficiency, responsiveness and approachability (Figure 1). We have not touched upon macroeconomic situations such as level of inflation, unemployment and economic growth. This survey-based article is an attempt to examine the issue of governance and its relationship with the trust in the state government by looking at the evidence from the Indian states. With a view to focus on ‘governance as access’ and evaluate governance from the ‘prism’ of those it is meant for, this study has a limited focus. It seeks to present governance as viewed from the vantage position of those for whom the benefits of governance were meant for and the wider implications of the same.

Despite having several studies, analysing the relationship between the performance of the government, outreach of welfare schemes, efficiency in the service delivery of the government and return of the incumbent government, very few studies in India have focused on the linkage between governance and trust in the state government. Trust in the state government could be verily linked to the perceptions of ‘access to what governance hopes to deliver to the people’. Due to the limited studies conducted to assess overall performance of the state governments in terms of delivering public good, welfare schemes and associational engagement of citizens with government via interaction and its impact on trust, this article tries to fill this gap.

Given the earlier discussion, we develop three broad hypotheses. First, beneficiaries of the state welfare schemes are more likely to have greater trust in state government compared to the non-beneficiaries. State governments can benefit in terms of trust from those who have benefitted from the welfare policies of the state government. Citizens who have themselves or know of anyone in their household who have benefitted from the state welfare schemes such as education, health, employment and agriculture will have greater trust in the state government than those who have not. Second, those who had ease in accessing services will have greater trust in state government compared to those who had a bad experience. Those citizens who had a good and positive experience in availing public services, such as education, hospitals, electricity, water and sanitation, are more likely to have greater trust in the state government than those who found it difficult to assess the same. And finally, citizens who trust the state institutions for dispute settlement and approach them for getting any important work done have higher trust in state government than those who do not. The citizens who would approach state institutions (police and courts) over non-state institutions for getting their dispute settled are more likely to also have greater trust in the state government, and those who prefer approaching the state institutions (MLA, councillor/sarpanch and government official) over other institutions for getting an important work done are more likely to have greater trust in the state government.

Data and Sampling

The analysis in this article is based on a study ‘Politics and Society between Elections’ (PSBE), which was carried out in 24 Indian states in 3 rounds of surveys involving face-to-face interviews, between 2016 and 2018. The study was designed in such a manner that these states provided a window to understand the politics between elections closely and accurately. The article seeks to answer whether governance enhances the trust in government—particularly in the state government. To measure the trust in the state government, we have clubbed two questions together, that is, ‘How much trust do people have in Chief Minister?’ and ‘How much trust do people have in State Assembly (Vidhan Sabha)?’. The rationale for using these two questions to measure the level of trust in the state government was that both the institutions, state assembly and the chief minster—represent the state government. With elections in Indian states increasingly revolving around the personality of leaders, chief ministers have come to play a critical role in representing the face of the government.² The response categories provided to the respondents for both these questions ranged from ‘a great deal of trust’ to ‘not trust at all’. Before clubbing these two variables to create the index of trust in government (trust_government),³ the response categories were rearranged from ‘not at all trust’ to ‘a great deal of trust’.

To measure the governance as access, we have taken three broader sets of factors: (a) self-reported beneficiaries of the welfare policies introduced by the state governments; (b) citizens’ experience in availing public services; and (c) citizens’ interaction with state and non-state apparatuses for dispute resolution and to get an important work done. In this article, we look at governance as access—through the prism of efficiency (how effectively state is successful in implementing the welfare policies); responsiveness (citizens’ experience in availing public services) and approachability (citizens’ accessibility to various institutions for their work and settling disputes). Aforesaid sets of questions were used as three indices. The first index was on beneficiaries of state schemes (labelled as state_scheme_beneficiaries), which was created after clubbing those respondents who have themselves or someone in their households availed the benefits of the four state welfare schemes, namely agriculture, housing, employment and health. Second, an index of service delivery (labelled as service_delivery) was created. Respondents were asked to share their experience of availing public services such as public schools, hospitals, electricity, water and sanitation. The response categories were from 1 ‘very difficult’ to 4 ‘very easy’. Those who never accessed these services were excluded from the analysis. The third index was dispute settlement (labelled dispute_settlement), which was created after clubbing the responses on the kind of institutions people approached for dispute related to family, neighbourhood, property and domestic violence. In the response categories, people suggested the names of institutions they would approach for dispute settlement—1, within family; 2 neighbourhood/village elder; 3 caste/community; 4 NGO; 5 police; and 6 court. These answer categories were later merged to form two groups: 1, ‘non-state institutions’ (options 1–4) and 2, ‘state institutions’ (5 and 6). This was done to understand the respect or trust of citizens in the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them. Additionally, a single question worded ‘If you ever have difficulty in getting an important work done, whom will you first think of approaching for help?’ was also used to study the accessibility aspect of governance. The options given to respondents were ‘1, MP; 2, MLA; 3, councillor/sarpanch; 4, government official; 5, local political leader; 6, caste leader; 7, religious leader; 8, elder outside your family; 9, dalals/touts; 10, NGOs; and 11, any other. These categories too were recoded into two categories 1 ‘state level institutions (2–4)’⁴ and ‘other institutions’ as ‘0’.

In the contemporary political developments in India, we have observed a rising importance of the role of the central leadership (prime minister) in shaping people’s perceptions and evaluations of governments. Therefore, we tried to see whether trust in the state government is in anyway affected by trust in the central leadership. People’s trust in the prime minister was also used as an explanatory variable. A new variable trust in prime minister (labelled trust_pm) was created after recoding the trust question on prime minister by changing the order from ‘no trust at all’ to ‘a great deal of trust’, which was in reverse order in actual data. We further included a variable ‘same party at the centre and the state’ (labelled same party at centre), which was calculated after recoding the state into two groups, where 0 stands for states having different ruling parties/alliance as compared to centre in this case other than the BJP (NDA) government and 1 for those having same party or coalition partners. Table A1 presents the description of our dependent variable (DV) along with the main independent variables (IVs).

Other than governance and other relevant variables, socio-demographic variables were also used in the analysis. There are a few studies that highlight how there is an unequal distribution of services and poor implementation of PSBE (Swaminathan and Palshikar, 2020) ). Though the government introduced various schemes, which were deliberately designed for the marginal sections of society such as the poor, those from lower castes, the rural residents and women, these schemes many a times appear not to reach these segments. Therefore, these demographic variables were considered significant while analysing governance and the level of trust.

Figure 2 provides the state-wise mean scores for the DV. Kerala, Jharkhand, Tripura and Chhattisgarh had the greatest trust in their state government, whereas in Jammu Kashmir, Punjab, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, people showed the lowest trust in their state government.

Figure 2.

Source: Politics and society between election survey data.

Table A2 provides state-wise mean scores for all the IVs. Column 2 provides the beneficiaries of state schemes on which states such as Karnataka, Mizoram, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana performed reasonably well, whereas Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh lagged far behind. On the issue of service delivery, people of Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram had a far better and a more positive experience as compared to respondents in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.

We also tried to tap the level of interaction citizens had with the state institutions like the police or courts for dispute settlement. Do people prefer non-state institutions over state institutions to get disputes related to family, property, neighbourhood and domestic violence resolved? This question was only asked in the second and third rounds of the PSBE study, and hence responses for Haryana, Odisha, Karnataka and Gujarat are missing, as these states were covered in the first round. However, when on look at the remaining 20 states, Mizoram, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand were the states where state institutions are preferred over non-state institutions. On the other hand, in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, people were found to be more inclined to approach non-state institutions for dispute settlement. Additionally, when it came to getting any important work done, people of Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana approached state-level institutions, whereas, for those in Mizoram, West Bengal, Gujarat and Tripura, the choice was the other non-state institutions. On the question of trust in the prime minister, people in Haryana, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh were found to have more trust in the prime minister, whereas in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, trust in the prime minister was the lowest (Table A2).

Analysis and Modelling

Before heading towards the multivariate analysis, we present the bivariate analysis as shown in Figure A1 and Table 1. In Figure A1, we provide the means of demographic variables such as economic class, gender, caste groups and location, with governance variables and trust in government. When we look at self-reported beneficiaries of the state schemes, the poor and lower class were found to have benefitted less, which means the targeted section was not getting their due share or the lack of awareness is preventing them from receiving the benefits of the schemes that are meant for them. When people were asked to share their experience in receiving public services, the same economic classes found it more difficult to access public services such as electricity, schooling, health, water and sanitation. Even when it came to interacting with state, they were less likely to approach the state apparatus for settling any dispute. As compared to the middle class and the rich, these economic classes approached non-state institution to settle disputes related to family, neighbourhood, property and domestic violence. However, when it came to approaching various actors to get any important work done, the poor approached state-level institutions more than lower and middle classes, though the rich also approached state-level institutions. When we look at the level of trust on the state government, people from lower economic strata hold low trust in the state government as compared to those from higher economic strata.

On the other hand, when we look at the social classes (caste groups), a greater proportion of Scheduled Tribes (STs) benefitted from state schemes, followed by Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs). For STs and SCs, availing public services was comparatively difficult than for OBCs and other caste groups. When people from different caste groups were asked about the institutions they approached for settlement of disputes, SCs were less likely and ST’s were more likely to approach state institutions to settle their disputes, followed by other castes and OBCs. When asked whom would they approach to get an important work done, the STs were least interested in approaching state-level institutions as compared to upper castes and OBCs. We can also see that the STs exhibited lower trust in the state government as compared to other caste groups. The respondents from upper caste groups had the highest trust in the state government.

The location where respondents lived also determined their trust as people living in different locations have different experiences while availing benefits of different schemes and public services. Those residing in rural localities were more likely to have availed the benefits of the state schemes compared to those in urban areas, but when it comes to availing public services, their rating of service delivery was not as positive as that of those residing in urban localities. When it comes to the citizens’ interaction with state government, they have different patterns. For instance, when it comes to dispute settlement, the urban respondents showed an inclination towards state institutions to settle their dispute, whereas rural residents preferred non-state institutions like families or neighbourhood. However, for getting any important work done, the rural respondents approached state actors such as MLAs, sarpanch/councillor or government officers much more in comparison to urban respondents. Women too shared different opinions on these parameters as compared to men. Men received more benefits of the state schemes, shared positive experience in availing state services, approached state actors and state institutions for getting their work done and dispute settlement as compared to women. Overall, men also had greater trust in the state government than women (Figure A1).

In Table 1, we present the basic correlation matrix to see how the main IVs (all variables are in scales) are related with the DVs. If we see the various components of governance from the perspective of access, that is, beneficiaries of state schemes, experience in availing public services, institutions approached for dispute settlement and for getting an important work done and its relation with trust in the state government, one observes a positive and statistically significant relationship. Two other explanatory variables, that is, state and centre having the same government and trust in PM also showed positive and statistically significant correlation with trust in the state government.

Table 1.

Correlation Matrix of Dependent and Independent Variables

		Trust in Government
Beneficiaries of state schemes	Pearson correlation	0.099*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000
	N	48,542
Experience in availing public services	Pearson correlation	0.144*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000
	N	47,391
Institutions approach for dispute settlement	Pearson correlation	0.082*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000
	N	48,542
Institutions approach to get important work done	Pearson correlation	0.028*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000
	N	44,728
State and centre have same party in power	Pearson correlation	0.102*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000
	N	46,531
Trust in PM	Pearson correlation	0.579*
	Sig. (2-tailed)	0.000
	N	45,316

Source: Politics and society between election survey data.

Note: * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

We then used the ordinary least square (OLS) regression model for multivariate analysis Table 2. Three models were run by inserting variables systematically. However, in each model, we have used four control variables, that is, economic class, caste groups (STs and SCs), location and gender. In the first model, we have used our main IVs, which had four components of governance as access (beneficiaries of state schemes, experience in availing public services, institutions approached for dispute settlement and institutions approached to get important work done) with our DVs and trust in government. The results show that all four variables have a significant and positive relationship with the trust in state government. The beneficiaries of the state government schemes showed higher levels of trust in the state government as compared to the non-beneficiaries. Factors like positive assessment of service delivery and interaction with the state government for dispute settlement were also positively related with trust in government.

Table 2.

OLS Regression

	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
	B	Std. Error	B	Std. Error	B	Std. Error
Beneficiaries of state schemes	0.449***	0.024	0.447***	0.023	0.187***	0.018
Experience in availing public services	0.228***	0.008	0.226***	0.008	0.125***	0.006
Institutions approach for dispute settlement	0.133***	0.009	0.138***	0.009	0.178***	0.007
Institutions approach to get important work done	0.039***	0.010	0.035***	0.010	0.018*	0.008
State and centre have same party in power			0.268***	0.010	−0.064***	0.018
Trust in prime minister (no trust as reference)
Low trust in PM					0.709***	0.0153
High trust in PM					1.163***	0.0159
Interaction variable: state and centre have same party # trust in PM (same party and no trust in PM as PM reference)
Same party and low trust in PM					0.033**	0.022
Same party and high trust in PM					0.255***	0.022
New economic class (poor to rich)	0.019***	0.005	0.026***	0.005	−0.007	0.004

Gender (1. male and 2. female)	−0.117***	0.010	−0.106***	0.010	−0.044***	0.008
Scheduled Caste	−0.028*	0.014	−0.067***	0.014	−0.067***	0.011
Scheduled Tribe	−0.083***	0.014	−0.159***	0.014	−0.131***	0.011
Locality	0.011	0.011	0.036**	0.011	0.020*	0.009
(Constant)	2.013	0.036	1.868	0.037	2.980	0.029
Adjusted R square	0.040		0.056		0.326

Source: Politics and society between election survey data.

Notes: ***p-value = 0.000; **p-value between 0.001 and 0.01; and *p-value more than 0.01 and below 0.05.

The first model shows that welfare schemes launched and executed by the state governments lead to higher levels of trust in the state government. However, in the case of India, there could arise a problem of credit attribution between state and central welfare schemes due to a low level of awareness. Some studies (Deshpande et al., 2019; Mishra & Attri, 2019) have talked about the issue of credit distribution of welfare scheme between different levels of government. Therefore, in the next model, we have included the variable ‘whether state and centre have the same party in power’ along with our four governance variables and control variables. The objective of putting this variable in the model was to see whether both centre and states that were ruled by the same party/alliance had any impact on the level of trust in the state government. The hypothesis here was that having the same ruling party/alliance at both the levels would increase the level of trust in the state government as the issue of credit attribution would not arise in such cases.

The regression result of Model 2 confirms the same, as this variable also holds a positive and statistically significant relationship with trust in the state government, which indicates that if states have the same ruling party as the one in power at the centre, they have more trust in the state government, though the variable beneficiaries of state schemes again have the highest coefficient value but decreased a little as compared with model 1 in the presence of the state and centre having the same ruling party. As we noticed in model 2, having the same party in power in the state as well as the centre has a positive relation with trust in the state government. This is indicative of the impact of the same party in power at both levels in shaping trust in the state government. Suri and Kailash (2014) have argued that perception towards the government and leadership trump welfare benefits, as despite having positive assessment of welfare scheme, the incumbent lost the election, and the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi came to power after winning the election in 2014. The leadership phenomenon was highlighted in 2014 and 2019 (Mishra & Attri, 2019; Shastri & Syal, 2014; Shastri, 2019), where many BJP voters stated that they would have voted for other parties if Modi was not the prime minister candidate. Therefore, we tried to check the impact of central leadership, which was measured through the level of trust in the prime minister in Model 3. In this model, we have used the interaction variable of the same ruling party at the state and central level and trust in the prime minister. The results showed that the relationship between having the same party in power in the centre and states and level of trust in the prime minister is statistically significant. Though governance at the state level (performance) does impact the trust in the state government, trust in national leadership enhances more trust in the state government. The data suggested that if the states and centre have the same party in power and there are high levels of trust in the PM, people showed high trust in the state government as well. This indicates the importance of central leadership in shaping trust for the state government.

When we look at the five control variables, locality was not statistically significant in model 1, but it was highly significant in model 2 and moderately significant in model 3. Urban residents showed more trust in the state government than their rural counterparts. Economic class was significant in models 1 and 2 and had a positive relationship with trust, indicating that the rich have more trust in state governments compared to lower economic class. However, economic class was not significant in model 3. Gender was also statistically significant, which indicates that men have more trust in the state government than women. Both SCs and STs showed lower trust in the state government as compared to other caste groups and hold a significant relationship.

Conclusion

Using the data from PSBE study, in this article, we have tried to empirically test the hypothesis that governance as access increases people’s trust in the state government. The data and analysis presented in this article show that the states fare very differently on governance and service delivery. Additionally, a state could fare favourably on one indicator but fail on the other. Overall, Karnataka, Mizoram, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana performed better in providing welfare schemes to people, whereas Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh lagged far behind. In terms of service delivery, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram fared better than West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, and Jammu and Kashmir. We also observed the different levels of associational participation of people and citizens’ interaction with state institutions across states.

Through multivariate analysis, we observed that if people are getting the benefits of the state welfare schemes, they are more likely to trust the state government. Nonetheless, factors like experience in availing public services and citizens’ interaction with the state also enhance the trust in the state government. As discussed in the past literature that due credit attribution for welfare programmes sometimes impact peoples’ perception towards their government. States having the same government at the state and centre further strengthens one’s trust in the state government. This populist centralization of Indian politics can be attributed to the fact that states with the same ruling party as the centre and high levels of trust in the prime minister have more trust in the state government.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sandeep Shastri, Siddharth Swaminathan, Suhas Palshikar and the anonymous referee for their comments and suggestion. We are also grateful to Himanshu Bhattacharya for providing efficient guidance in creating the indices and addressing data-related queries.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Appendix

Table A2.

State-Wise Mean Score of Indices

State	State Scheme Beneficiaries	Service Delivery	Dispute Settlement	Institutions Approach for Work	State and Centre Have Same Party in Power	Trust in PM
Andhra Pradesh	0.046	2.915	1.160	1.689	0	2.519
Assam	0.036	2.688	1.100	1.692	1	3.404
Bihar	0.101	2.894	1.135	1.600	0	3.282
Gujarat	0.113	2.930	Not asked	1.386	1	3.082
Haryana	0.114	2.774	Not asked	1.703	1	3.618
Jammu and Kashmir	0.015	2.720	1.042	1.671	0	2.222
Karnataka	0.294	2.922	Not asked	1.392	0	3.501
Kerala	0.106	3.250	1.241	1.511	0	2.876
Madhya Pradesh	0.168	3.076	1.084	1.726	1	3.142
Maharashtra	0.036	2.951	1.131	1.563	1	3.231
Mizoram	0.270	3.035	1.384	1.254	0	3.472
Nagaland	0.000	2.732	1.109	1.450	1	2.889
Odisha	0.243	2.804	Not asked	1.642	0	3.554
Punjab	0.057	2.778	1.081	1.913	0	2.093
Rajasthan	0.216	2.740	1.119	1.672	1	3.354
Tamil Nadu	0.162	2.979	1.197	1.524	0	2.351
Tripura	0.095	2.709	1.145	1.324	1	3.391
Uttar Pradesh	0.102	2.870	1.098	1.600	1	3.058
West Bengal	0.121	2.530	1.182	1.266	0	3.231
Delhi	0.146	2.737	1.187	1.590	0	2.968
Jharkhand	0.177	2.793	1.191	1.541	1	3.525
Chhattisgarh	0.108	3.105	1.112	1.883	1	3.511
Uttarakhand	0.118	2.972	1.160	1.657	1	3.386
Telangana	0.198	2.876	1.132	1.647	0	3.048

Source: Politics and society between election survey data.

Notes

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