‘Small Worlds’ as Predictors of General Political Attitudes

Abstract

In a federal system, do citizens have varying amounts of trust and efficacy for different levels of government? Individuals might, for example, feel a greater sense of efficacy for the more proximate level. This contribution examines 40 years of Canadian Election Study (CES) data to determine whether and how citizens distinguish between levels of government to determine which level of government is deemed more important and whether one is more likely to prompt higher levels of trust and efficacy. After establishing that individuals do indeed hold varying levels of trust and efficacy for provincial and federal governments, the analysis takes advantage of innovative questions in the 1984 CES and makes clear that state and sub-state trust and efficacy exert an independent impact on general political attitudes.