Procedural fairness and political trust among young people: Evidence from a panel study on Swedish high school students

Abstract

The role of 'fair' institutions in developing democratic legitimacy has received increased attention. Citizens who perceive -on basis of past experiences -that they are being treated fairly by authorities have been held to have greater trust in political institutions. However, previous studies on the relationship between procedural fairness and political trust have not paid sufficient attention to individuals with limited first-hand experiences of authorities. We examine the relationship on an authority that virtually all individuals meet early in life: the school. Using structural equation modeling on unique panel data covering 1500 Swedish adolescents (ages ranging from 13 to 17), we find a reciprocal relationship: personal encounters with school authorities shape young people's political trust; however, the images that adolescents get of the political system (through family, peers, media and so on) have also consequences on their perceptions about the authorities they encounter in their daily lives. The analysis increases our understanding of how individuals form their political allegiances by showing that the relationship between fairness and trust is more dynamic than has previously been suggested: neither an accumulated set of experiences of authorities nor formal ties with political institutions (as voters and so on) are required for a relationship to emerge.

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

“…Therefore, we argue that individuals use evaluations of fair treatment by the police to form trust judgments for political institutions generally (see also Abdelzadeh et al. ; Van Sluis & Van de Walle ).…”

“…Accordingly, street-level bureaucrats' 'behaviors function as important signals to citizens about the moral standard of the society in which they live' (Rothstein & Stolle 2008: 246). Therefore, we argue that individuals use evaluations of fair treatment by the police to form trust judgments for political institutions generally (see also Abdelzadeh et al 2015;Van Sluis & Van de Walle 2015).…”

Re-conceptualizing classroom assessment fairness: A systematic meta-ethnography of assessment literature and beyond

“…Fairness has consistently been emphasized in classroom assessment (CA) standards and practices as an essential quality and a significant dimension of teachers' assessment literacy (DeLuca, 2012;DeLuca, LaPointe-McEwan, & Luhanga, 2016;Xu & Brown, 2016). Empirical studies have demonstrated that teachers' fairness practices are associated with positive learning effects for students such as cognitive learning (Holmgren & Bolkan, 2014;Molinari, Speltini, & Passini, 2013), instructor satisfaction (Wendorf & Alexander, 2005), self-efficacy (Vallade, Martin, & Weber, 2014), legitimation of teacher and school authority (Gouveia-Pereira, Vala, Palmonari, & Rubini, 2003;Nelson, Shechter, & Ben-Ari, 2014), political trust (Abdelzadeh, Zetterberg, & Ekman, 2015), and positive evaluation of teacher expertise (Cronen & Fuller, 1976;Gotlieb, 2009;Rodabaugh & Kravitz, 1994). In contrast, perceived unfair behavior is associated with outcomes such as aggression and hostility (Horan, Chory, Carton, Miller, & Raposo, 2013;Uludag, 2014), truancy (Ishak & Fin, 2013), headache (Lenzi et al, 2013), and cheating (Lemons, Martin, & Seaton, 2011).…”

Personally affected, politically disaffected? How experiences with public employment services impact young people's political efficacy

“…The encounters people have with representatives of the state within public services can shape people's perceptions of legitimacy and representativeness (Peters, 2010). Moreover, how people evaluate public services can spill over into numerous other realms, such as institutional trust (Abdelzadeh, Zetterberg, & Ekman, 2015;Kumlin, 2009) or satisfaction with democracy (Ariely, 2013). Thus, interactions with public entities matter for people's willingness to participate in political life.…”