Trust in public institutions, a comparative study of Botswana and Tanzania

Abstract

This thesis concerns institutional trust in Botswana and Tanzania and seeks to test several variables' importance in determining individuals' trust. African countries have historically been somewhat neglected in trust research and these two countries have therefore been chosen as the cases of my study. Based on the cultural theories and institutional theories of trust I have selected socio-demographic factors, social capital, transparency, democratic satisfaction and policy performance as my independent variables. The analysis is based on survey data from Afrobarometer conducted in 2012. The findings in this thesis suggest that the cultural theories do little in explaining institutional trust as the socio-demographic and social capital variables do rather poorly. Institutional theories on the other hand do very well in explaining variations in trust in public institutions. The most determining variable in terms of individuals trust in public institutions seems to be the general policy performance of the government and individuals' approval of the President's performance.