Trust, Efficacy and Opposition to Anti-terrorism Police Power: Australia in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of political trust and efficacy on citizens' opposition to government anti-terrorism police powers in Australia and five other nations with different levels of overall trust and confidence in government. Survey data are used to examine patterns of opposition to unlimited detention, random stop-and-searches, and telephone wiretap surveillance. While trust in government represents a powerful constraint on citizens' support for extending police powers in nations with historically low levels of trust, such as Russia and Taiwan, it plays almost no role in high-trust nations such as Australia, where citizens seem more concerned about governmental policy performance than abuse of authority. Overall, because citizens' trust and confidence in government vary nation by nation, the introduction of government anti-terror policies is received in distinctly different ways, allowing important insights into the nexus between political trust and governmental performance and authority.