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Trust in Public Institutions
Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI)
February, 2006

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Trust in political institutions is a key variable related to democratic governance. It is a component of social capital and is a key resource in the governance of a polity. What confidence do Zimbabweans have in their public institutions i.e. political and civic institutions? Specifically, how much trust do people have in the president (the symbol of the Zimbabwe regime since Independence), institutions of popular representation like Parliament and local government councils, institutions of 'legitimate' state coercion like the military and the police, and civic institutions like political parties and the media?

The survey was conducted from 9 to 26 October 2005 and covered both urban and rural segments of all ten administrative provinces in Zimbabwe. It was based on a double sample: a nationally representative random main sample of 1096 respondents and a purposeful sub-sample of 104 respondents comprising victims of the Government's Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Order. In both cases, respondents were Zimbabwean men and women of voting age. Because of disruptions of fieldwork by some unruly political elements, completion of the survey was aborted and in the end 1048 interviews of the main sample and 64 of the sub-sample were completed totalling 1112 interviews. The Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI), a Zimbabwean non-governmental research organisation, did all fieldwork. Below are the key findings relating to trust in political and civic institutions.

Except for the judiciary and the military, none of the institutions surveyed attracts the trust of even half the adult populace. Table 1 shows the levels of trust accorded to these institutions. The least trusted are government newspapers (28%), followed by the country's electoral machinery - the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission - that was accorded 29% trust. The ruling party, the State President (who is also the ruling party's president) and local government councils are also low trust institutions obtaining 31% and 33% respectively. The military still retains considerable though declining trust among Zimbabweans. In 2005 it registered trust of 50%, a figure that is two percent less than the 52% recorded in 1999. In 2004, it was 55%. It is important to note that all three non-state institutions are accorded reasonably respective levels of trust in the ranges of 41% to
47%. Opposition political parties are trusted by nearly half of the randomly selected respondents and registered the highest trust (47%) among non-state institutions.

It is indisputably clear that public trust in virtually all government institutions has substantially eroded in the eighteen months between Rounds 2 (April/May 2004) and 3 (October 2005). For example, about 40% of the respondents in 2004 reported a loss of trust in the President as compared to more than two thirds (67%) in 2005. However, the low levels of public trust have not sunk to the 1999 levels when 75% reported distrust in the President. In tracking the three survey periods, 2004 was the high water mark for trust in pro-state institutions.

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