社会流动与政治信任：基于CGSS2006数据的实证研究

本文通过中国综合社会调查（CGSS2006）数据，详细分析了中国的社会流动对民众政治信任的影响。研究表明，中国30年的改革开放和经济发展为民众提供了大量向上流动的机会，并给他们带来改善生活的希望。人们所经历的向上代际流动和代内流动，以及对向上流动的感知与预期都显著增强了他们的政治信任。结果显示，社会经济发展为人们带来的向上流动的经历与期望有助于维护社会政治稳定。

Social Mobility and Political Trust: An Empirical Study Based on CGSS2006

Political trust is crucial for the legitimacy of a regime. Hence, the impact of social mobility on political trust is an important topic concerned by the scholars who care about the political consequences of social mobility. Using the data from China General Social Survey (CGSS) 2006, this study not only measured the inter-generational occupational mobility, inter-generational educational mobility, and intra-generational occupational mobility of the Chinese citizens in objective dimensions before 2006, but also measured the Chinese people’s perceived social mobility and expected social mobility in subjective dimensions. Based on the respondents’ trust in the government institutions and the central media across eight social issues, a “Political Trust Index” was constructed by using factor analysis. This study further examined the effects of social mobility on political trust in China. The results showed that: (1) the political trust not only had a vertical structure, i.e., people’s trust in the government departments at different levels of political hierarchy, but also had a horizontal structure, i.e., people’s trust in the same government departments across different social issues; (2) the reform and the great economic development in China over the past three decades provided great opportunities for Chinese citizens to achieve upward social mobility, and brought them hopes to live a better life in the future. The experiences of inter generational and intra-generational upward mobility, the perception and the expectation of upward social mobility all enhanced Chinese citizens’ trust of their government; (3) however, Chinese people’s experience of downward social mobility before 2006 didn’t significantly undermine their political trust yet during that time period. These findings, on one hand, explain the reason why Chinese citizens still held a relatively high political trust in their government around 2006; on the other hand, they indicate that the experience and expectation of upward mobility largely due to socioeconomic development might have contributed to the social and political stability in China.