Reconsidering What Constitutes Trust in the Judiciary
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2024-06-13
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en
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The dominant approach to researching trust in the judiciary focuses on perceived procedural justice. This approach does however not study citizens who do not come into contact with the judiciary as a litigant. Yet, this is important to research as judiciaries rely on public trust and support to maintain independence. This thesis therefore examines the relationship between the political attitudes of citizens and their level of trust in the judiciary. Using unique survey data from Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK), I employ fixed effects regression models and country-specific regression models to test hypotheses on populist, authoritarian, and technocratic attitudes and their relationship with trust in the judiciary. The results indicate that citizens with strong populist attitudes have less trust in the judiciary. Individuals with stronger technocratic attitudes are found to have more trust in the judiciary. Authoritarian individuals exhibit less trust in the judiciary. However, Spanish citizens with strong authoritarian attitudes – in contrast to citizens of Germany, Poland, and the UK – are shown to have a positive association with trust in the judiciary. Additionally, Polish citizens with strong populist attitudes are shown to have a particular distrust of the judiciary. All in all, these findings have important theoretical implications as they show that not all citizens are alike in how they perceive and evaluate the judiciary and the link between political attitudes and trust in the judiciary is context-dependent.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen