Do civil servants in some countries have higher organizational commitment? Is there any substantial cross-national variation in the form and degree of commitment? Good governance studies show a positive link between Weberian bureaucracy and favourable macro-level outcomes. However, previous comparative research is silent regarding cross-national differences of individual bureaucrats' attitudes and their relationship with national bureaucratic structures. Employing social exchange theory, we argue that closed civil service systems produce higher commitment in senior public officials than open systems do. Using two large data sets in 20 European countries, we find closed systems are associated with continuance and normative commitment.

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This study assesses the impact of different job security rules on federal employees’ organizational commitment by looking at the effects of changes in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) precipitated by MaxHR, introduced to DHS in 2005. The 2005 job security rule changes, as part of the “reformed” personnel system of the new DHS, reduced employee job security, which in turn weakened organizational commitment. The study found subsequent repeal of the job security rules in 2007 boosted organizational commitment among DHS workers by as much as 10 percentage points. Taken together, the results of difference-in-differences (DID) analysis for the new job security rules in the period 2005-2006 and subsequent repeal of the job security rules in the period 2007-2010 suggest that employees’ commitment to DHS was more favorable after the repeal of the job security rules than prior to the 2005 reforms.

This article synthesizes public and private sector accumulated research regarding the relationship between job security and employee work attitudes (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment). The present meta-analysis of 37 studies (including 45 independent samples) shows that the medium-sized associations between job security and each work attitude variables (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment) were found, with true score correlations (ρ) of .327 for job satisfaction, and .253 for organizational commitment. These results highlight the significance of job security at the workplace, in shaping and enhancing attitudes of employee and job security is worth retaining in some form in the public sector, contrary to the logic of at-will employment. This meta-analysis findings also call attention to several important considerations for developing effective public job security policy.

Political trust is a fundamental bedrock for a political system to work. The "trust-asevaluation" approach has identified an individual's perceived evaluation of economic performance and income inequality as critical determinants of political trust. Another stream of research has argued that macro-level factors, measured by macroeconomic indicators or GINI index, are correlated with political trust. To date, only a few empirical studies have questioned how macro-level performance interacts with those at the micro-level, namely, individuals' subjective evaluations. Existing empirical studies mainly focus on Europe with little attention to Asia. To fill a gap in the literature, we extend the "trust-as-evaluation approach" to the Asian context, employing a multilevel analysis using the Asian Barometer Survey's fourth wave. This study identifies that: (i) an individual's perception of their economic well-being or inequality is the critical determinant of political trust; (ii) macro-level economic performance has an unclear and mixed effect on political trust; and (iii) instead, macro-level income inequality functions as a moderator between the relationship between perceived income inequality and political trust.