Fair treatment,fair play? The relationship between fair treatment perceptions,political trust and compliant and cooperative attitudes cross-nationally

Obtaining citizens’ voluntary compliance with political decisions is a fundamental democratic challenge. Fair treatment by public officials plays a key role in theoretical and empirical studies on citizens’ compliance and cooperation. Yet it is unclear whether citizens within different societies react to (un)fair treatment in the same way. Using multilevel structural equation modelling and multilevel regression analysis on the European Social Survey 2010–2 (N = 52,458), this article shows that perceptions of fair treatment by police officers are associated with higher levels of trust in political institutions and in turn stronger compliant and cooperative attitudes of citizens in 27 countries. Yet the link between perceptions of unfair treatment and institutional trust is stronger in countries in which fair behaviour is more prevalent. While fair treatment is often considered to be a universal norm affecting citizens in a uniform way, this article sheds light on important cross-national variations.     

A problem-based approach to understanding public support for referendums

A prominent explanation of widespread popular support for referendums is dissatisfaction with the functioning of representative democracy. In this article, the aim is to gain a better understanding of how dissatisfaction affects support for referendums. Drawing on previous research, it is argued here that citizens follow a problem-based approach in their support for referendums, in that referendums are considered a suitable solution to address some specific problems in a political system but not all. Survey data from the 2012 European Social Survey (29 countries; N = 37,070) is used to show that citizens’ expectations towards and evaluations of representatives relate to support for referendums. In particular, dissatisfaction with the ability of governments to listen to their citizens is associated with higher support for referendums. In contrast, citizens dissatisfied with the government's ability to lead are less supportive of referendums. Furthermore, the relationship between dissatisfaction with governments’ ability to listen varies across countries depending on the level of experience with decision making via referendum. In countries where referendums are used more often, the expectation of referendums being able to solve the problem of unresponsive government is weaker. This study offers important insights into the different ways in which preferences and evaluations of representative practices relate to popular support for referendums.     

Does political trust matter? An empirical investigation into the relation between political trust and support for law compliance

Scholars have repeatedly expressed concern about the consequences low levels of political trust might have for the stability of democratic political systems. Empirical support and the identification of causal mechanisms for this concern, however, are often lacking. In this article, the relation between political trust and law‐abiding attitudes is investigated. It is expected that citizens with low levels of trust in the institutions of the political system will find it more acceptable to break the law. As a result, low levels of political trust might undermine the effectiveness and legitimacy of government action and its ability to implement legislation. Based on survey data from 33 European countries using the 1999–2001 European Values Study (N = 41,125), the relation between political trust and legal permissiveness is examined using a multilevel ordered logistic regression analysis. The results show that respondents with low levels of political trust are significantly more likely to accept illegal behaviour such as tax fraud than respondents with high levels of political trust. Since it is known from earlier research that actors who are permissive towards law‐breaking behaviour are more likely to commit these acts themselves, the hypothesis that low levels of political trust will be associated with less law compliance within a society is supported.     

Theorizing Implementation of Public Management Policy Reforms: A Case Study of Strategic Planning and Programming in the European Commission

As a measure to rectify the European Commission's "management deficit," the institution's authorities decided to introduce new forms of commission-wide strategic planning and programming in 2000. Drawing on semistructured interviews with Commission officials, this article tracks the key turning points, trajectories, and outcomes of events within the implementation stage of this part of the Commission managerial reform. As an instrumental case study, the article begins to theorize the process of implementing public management policy change. Major conceptual issues addressed include how reform decisions serve to activate the social mechanism of actor certification and how actor conduct amplifies such certification. Actor certification provides a link from reform choices to organizational change. In this respect and others, the research argument contrasts and integrates social theory mind-sets deriving from institutionalism and social interactionism (processualism) in line with research trends in historical sociology, organization science, and public management.