Working Paper No. 198 - Does local infrastructure determine trust in local government councils?

In the second column, which includes all controls from the first column as well as religious affiliation and a dummy for whether the respondent is Beti, the estimated coefficient shows that a one-unit increase in the infrastructure index in the respondent's neighbourhood increases the probability of trusting an elected local official by 43%, on average. [...] The drop in magnitude observed in the last column shows that the previous estimates of trust in elected local politicians were influenced by trust in the head of state. [...] The year was marked by the first impoundment of the Lom Pangar dam, the commissioning of the Kribi deepwater port, and the construction of the first 80 km section and the first concrete layers of the 215 km highway connecting the economic capital, Douala, with the political capital, Yaoundé (Investir au Cameroun, 2015). [...] The first column is trust in parliament, the second is trust in the tax department, the third is trust in election Cameroon, the fourth is trust in religious leaders, and the last column is trust in traditional leaders. [...] All regression models show a significant relationship between infrastructure provision and trust in local government officials: After controlling for trust in the president and the survey sponsor, a one-unit increase in the infrastructure index increases the likelihood of trust in local government officials by an average of 50%.