Trust in International Organizations: An Empirical Investigation Focusing on the United Nations

Abstract

The literature on social capital has strongly increased in the last two decades, but there still is a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of international trust. This empirical study analyzes a cross-section of individuals, using micro-data from the World Values Survey, covering 38 countries, to investigate trust in international organizations, specifically in the United Nations. In line with previous studies on international trust we find that political trust matters. We also find that social trust is relevant, but contrary to previous studies the results are less robust. Moreover, the paper goes beyond previous studies investigating also the impact of geographic identification, corruption and globalization. We find that a higher level of (perceived) corruption reduces the trust in the UN in developed countries, but increases trust in developing and transition countries. A stronger identification with the world as a whole also leads to a higher trust in the UN and a stronger capacity to act globally in economic and political environment increases trust in the UN.

Social Psychology and Public Support for Trade Liberalization

“…This level of trust in other countries is essentially a product of the view one has of basic human nature. People who do not trust others in their own ethnic and social group are particularly unlikely to trust foreigners (Brewer and Steenbergen ; Brewer, Gross, Aday and Wilnat ; Binning ; Torgler ; Citrin and Sides ; Herreros and Criado ).…”

What Determines Perceptions of Bias toward the International Criminal Court? Evidence from Kenya

“…Those skeptical of home governments will support outside intervention. This is not true in developed countries, where a negative valuation of domestic governing institutions correlates with a negative orientation toward international institutions like the United Nations (Torgler 2008) and European courts (Voeten 2013).…”

Why national and international legitimacy beliefs are linked: Social trust as an antecedent factor

“…In addition, we include several controls that previous literature suggests may be related to national or international confidence. To begin with, we include variables tapping satisfaction with national institutions to investigate whether this shapes confidence in national and international institutions (Torgler 2008;Zmerli 2010). Performance satisfaction measures whether a person agrees (1) or disagrees (0) that their government is doing a good job.…”

“…Finally, we control for gender as a dichotomous measure (1 = female), as women have been shown to have less supportive attitudes toward international institutions (Gabel and Scheve 2007;Dellmuth and Chalmers 2017), and age as a continuous variable, as younger people may be more cosmopolitan and therefore more likely to perceive international institutions as a good thing (Inglehart and Rabier 1978;Torgler 2008; Dellmuth and Chalmers 2017) (see Online Appendix B for descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations between all variables introduced in this section).…”