Do various bureaucratic characteristics explain different levels of public trust in civil service? While studies have suggested various desirable traits for public administration in democratic societies, including political responsiveness, representativeness, and professionalism, their possible linkages to public evaluations of government bureaucracies are insufficiently investigated. This article examines how such attributes are related to citizens’ evaluations of civil service using a multilevel analysis across 18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member nations. The bureaucratic characteristics are measured using data from the Quality of Government (QoG) Expert Survey and the OECD statistics. The survey data from the 2004 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) are used to capture individual perceptions of public administration. The empirical results show that levels of citizens’ trust in bureaucracies is higher when an impartial and gender representative public administration exists. The findings contribute to our understanding of the correlates of public trust in government agencies, as well as consequences of emphasizing different bureaucratic traits across nations.

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OECD 成员国的官僚特征和公民对公务员的信任

不同的官僚特征是否可以解释不同程度的公众对公务员的信任？虽然研究表明民主社会中的公共行政具有各种理想的特征，包括政治反应能力、代表性和专业性，但它们与政府官僚机构的公共评估之间可能存在的联系并未得到充分研究。本文通过对 18 个经济合作与发展组织 (OECD) 成员国的多层次分析，研究了这些属性如何与公民对公务员的评价相关联。官僚特征是使用政府质量（QoG）专家调查和经合组织统计数据来衡量的。来自 2004 年国际社会调查计划 (ISSP) 的调查数据用于捕捉个人对公共行政的看法。实证结果表明，当存在公正和性别代表的公共行政机构时，公民对官僚机构的信任程度更高。这些发现有助于我们理解公众对政府机构信任的相关性，以及强调不同国家不同官僚主义特征的后果。