Chapter 7 Determinants of Confidence in the Civil Service: An International Comparison

We use data from the World Values Survey to describe and compare levels of confidence in the civil service in a series of countries, and study determinants of this confidence. Instead of focusing on citizen satisfaction with specific public services in a specific country, we analyze citizens’ general attitudes toward the public administration or civil service, and compare these attitudes internationally. We fit 60 identical regression models, to test for the impact of a series of socio-demographic and socio-economic variables in each of the countries. We finish by comparing the determinants in each of the countries, and test whether cultural or regional patterns emerge.