The Impact of Good Governance and Social Capital on Political Trust: Case Study of Mashad and Sabzevar Cities

This article reviews the impact of good governance and social capital on political trust. The effects of feeling social security, non-existence of discrimination and corruption as three variables representing the concept of good governance, as well as public trust and membership in volunteer associations as two variables representing the concept of social capital, and some background variables representing political trust, have been tested. The amount of trusting 21 government institutions has been evaluated in order to measure the dependent variable in this survey.
The method of research is quantitative and the applied technique is survey. In this regard, two samples containing 600 individuals within the range of 18-65 years old in Mashhad and Sabzevar, have been selected randomly and interviewed. Multi-variable test results show that variables representing good governance explain the political trust variance better than social capital variables, in a way that all three variables of good governance, have entered into the regression equation of political trust, while among the social capital variables, only membership in Basij volunteer association, has entered into the aforementioned equation. The said variables, together with method of socialization in family, gender, education and city of residence explain totally 40 per cent of the variance of public trust variable. The findings of this research show that good governance variables better explain the public trust in the population under study. Moreover, results of political trust factors analysis show that the trust of interviewees to 21 government institutions may be categorized into three concealed factors: institutions related to everyday life, control institutions as well as political institutions.