The Influence of Public Corruption and Human Values on Trust in the Police: A European Cross-National Perspective
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Date
2019
Authors
Pfister, Sabrina
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Abstract
Police forces are an important part of every democratic system and depend on societal
legitimacy to perform their duties. Societal legitimacy stems from compliance with
binding principles, like human rights and national law, and from broad acceptance
from the people. Accordingly, police forces need the public’s trust to perform their
duties in today’s European democracies. This paper investigates trust in police forces
based on individual and contextual factors found in European countries. To explain
trust in police forces, this paper uses human values on an individual level as well as
perceived public-sector corruptionon a macro level. The analysis is based on data
from the European Social Survey 2016 (ESS) and the Corruption Perception Index 2015
(CPI). It combines individual and contextual factors using multilevel models to explore
differing levels of trust in police forces as well as the dynamics between perceived
public-sector corruption, human values, and trust in the police. The results confirm
previous findings that trust in police forces erodes in the face of perceived public-sector
corruption, while human values play a sub-ordered role in the explanation of trust in
the police in European countries.
Description
Keywords
Trust in the Police, CPI, Human Values, ESS, Multilevel analysis, article
Citation
Pfister S. The Influence of Public Corruption and Human Values on Trust in the Police: A European Cross-National Perspective / Sabrina Pfister // Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal. - 2019. - No. 5. - P. 119-140.