Losers’ Consent in Changing Welfare States: Output Dissatisfaction, Experienced Voice and Political Distrust

Abstract

Mature welfare states must increasingly handle growing fiscal pressures and a multitude of needs with smaller resources. Meanwhile, evaluations of policy outputs are characterized as ‘the weakest link’ in welfare state support, resulting in generalized political distrust. We assess the procedural fairness argument that citizens are not only concerned with welfare state outcomes but also assess the fairness of the processes of service delivery. The fairness perspective has usually been tested in cross-sectional studies, experiments or on the ‘input side’ of democracy. By contrast, we use primary three-wave panel data on evaluations and experiences with welfare state institutions. The random-effects within-between framework allows improved causal evidence that both outputs (service quality satisfaction) and procedural fairness (experienced voice opportunities) affect political trust. Crucially, however, perceived fairness mitigates detrimental effects of poor outcomes. This is because procedural voice matters, especially for the formation of political trust among losers.

How Does Social Security Fairness Predict Trust in Government? The Serial Mediation Effects of Social Security Satisfaction and Life Satisfaction

“…The results showed that social security satisfaction partially mediated the relationship between social security fairness and overall trust in government including at the central, county, and township levels of government. Previous studies have demonstrated that the fairness of the service delivery process and citizens’ satisfaction with the quality of public services are highly associated with trust in government [ 8 , 58 ]. Our results are consistent with previous studies.…”

Scaling Up? Unpacking the Effect of Deliberative Mini-Publics on Legitimacy Perceptions

“…While the extent to which citizens accept sortition as a mechanism for representation remains unclear, there is considerable evidence that opportunities for voice tend to increase legitimacy perceptions in the political sphere (e.g. Christensen et al, 2020;De Blok and Kumlin, 2022;Esaiasson et al, 2012) and beyond (Skitka et al, 2003). Citizens may also value that mini-publics provide space for detailed consideration of political issues by citizens with diverse political leanings, thus enabling more considered judgments (Cohen, 1989;Fishkin and Mansbridge, 2017).…”

Distributing Democratic Influence: External Efficacy and the Preferred Influence of Policy Winners and Losers

“…The attribution of benefits versus burdens via policy is a fundamental dividing line in politics. This is true not only for ego-tropic concerns about how an individual's own situation might be either improved or worsened (e.g., Compton & Lipsmeyer, 2019;de Blok & Kumlin, 2022), but also with regard to outgroups that stand to be positively or negatively impacted by a policy (see e.g., Ingram et al, 2007;Bell, 2021). At the same time, "asymmetry" in affectedness-that is, between those who would be negatively or positively affected by a reform-is a longstanding issue in related debates in democratic theory (c.f.…”