How Centralization Benefits Public Provision and Local Political Trust: The Case of Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Conventional wisdom holds that centralization undermines public provision and political trust. In contrast, this study argues that centralization can serve as a critical mechanism for overcoming authoritarian legacies and improving local governance in emerging democracies. Taiwan provides a compelling case: during its authoritarian era, decentralization fostered inefficiency, clientelism, and corruption. By shrinking local elite capture, centralization makes local government more responsive to citizens' demands for public provision, which in turn enhances political trust. We assess this argument by analyzing Taiwan's 2010 centralization reform, employing a difference‐in‐differences design with six waves of the Asian Barometer Survey (2001–2022). Our results show that citizens in areas that underwent centralization enjoy better access to healthcare and greater perceived safety. Meanwhile, the centralization also led to an increase in local political trust. These findings highlight the often‐overlooked potential of centralization to improve perceptions of public provision and strengthen political trust at the local level.