Peter Esaiasson
Biographic Data
| ID | 193549 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Esaiasson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Esaiasson |
| SIGNATURE | ESAIASSON P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Gothenburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8572-5462 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1059 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
The subjective dimension of residential segregation: Comparing neighborhood perceptions in vulnerable neighborhoods and the wider population
This study examines the subjective dimension of residential segregation by investigating whether residents of vulnerable neighborhoods perceive their neighborhoods differently from the wider population, how such perceptions vary across neighborhoods and national contexts, and which domains exhibit the strongest differences. Drawing on original comparative surveys from six vulnerable neighborhoods in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden alongside national…
Rationale and Methodologies for Surveying Vulnerable Neighborhoods: Lessons From Three Nordic Countries
The paper argues for the value of conducting surveys in vulnerable neighborhoods and provides a detailed account of a cost-effective strategy for surveying a recognized hard-to-survey population. The approach is illustrated through insights from the Vulnerable Neighborhoods Survey, conducted in three Nordic countries. The strategy focuses on a small number of specific neighborhoods and implements a range of measures to lower participation barrier…
Preaching conservative ideas: The speech-act theory of value conflict
This is a study of how opposing cultural values influence support for minorities’ civil liberties. We build on a rich body of work, which establishes that culturally liberal Europeans are more likely to value diversity and favor minority rights than are cultural conservatives. Our contribution is to bring attention to how a second dimension of value conflict upends this established pattern. If a religious minority, in this case Muslims, wants to …
Dual superordinate identities in Sweden's vulnerable neighborhoods: Stronger local and national identities associated with increases in institutional and interpersonal trust
A superordinate identity that emphasizes the shared bond between people of different groups can have beneficial outcomes according to the theoretical argument of the common ingroup identity model. Unlike previous research that focuses on a single superordinate identity, we simultaneously study two superordinate identities: local identity (identification with the neighborhood) and national identity (identification with the country of residence). O…
Walking a mile in their shoes —How local politicians reason about trade-off decisions
Social order in Sweden's politicized and vulnerable neighborhoods – The perspective of residents
This paper draws attention to a group of neighborhoods that are the object of heated elite discussions in many European countries. Using Sweden as our case, we demonstrate the feasibility of conducting high‐quality surveys with residents in neighborhoods where large shares have an immigrant background and low socioeconomic status. Moreover, we develop a measurement that allows us to assess what residents in two of Sweden's politicized and vulnera…
Waiting for Asylum: Reduced Institutional and Interpersonal Trust
Refugees arriving in Western countries spend long periods, often over a year, as asylum seekers. We examine how the period affects asylum seekers’ institutional and interpersonal trust. Drawing on theories of need gratification, we suggest that several needs are unfulfilled during this period of existential limbo. Still, some aspects in the new society are positive, especially in Sweden, the host country of this study. To study these combined for…
Perceived group discrimination and the integration paradox in stigmatized neighborhoods
Residents of “European Banlieues,” or stigmatized neighborhoods in urban peripheries across Europe, are frequent targets of discrimination. Scholars have previously found evidence of an “integration paradox,” where the most integrated people with foreign backgrounds perceive the most discrimination. In this research note, we evaluate whether the integration paradox extends to migrant-origin residents of “Banlieues.” Using an original two-wave pan…
How to be Gracious about Political Loss—The Importance of Good Loser Messages in Policy Controversies
Accepting defeat in political decision-making is crucial for the health of democracies. At the same time, being a good loser is challenging. How can citizens be motivated to be gracious about various types of political loss? In this paper, we study whether political leaders can play an important role in boosting the perceived quality of decision-making processes among losers in policy conflicts. We propose and test the impact of a simple interven…
Close (Causally Connected) Cousins
Trust in one’s fellow citizens and in politicians are both conducive to well-functioning government. Beyond their separate importance, it is a long-standing notion that generalized social trust and political trust are connected in a mutually reinforcing relationship that further undergirds democratic governance. While it is well established that social trust and political trust are robustly positively associated at the individual level, there is …
It’s Not Over When It’s Over”―Post-Decision Arrangements and Empirical Legitimacy
A chronic problem for democratic governments is generating legitimacy for policy decisions that go against substantial groups of citizens’ legitimate interests. The primary means of achieving this aim involve the arrangements through which policy decisions are made. Whereas research in the field has tended to focus on the arrangements leading up to a decision, this paper draws attention to developments after a formal policy decision has been made…
Reject, limbo, and accept: The Effect of Migration Decisions on Asylum Seekers
What is the effect of the state's decision to grant or reject a residence permit on asylum seekers? Relying on repeated surveys with recently arrived asylum seekers to Sweden, we examine what seems to be a random migration decision from the perspective of the asylum seekers to evaluate how the "limbo" nature of the waiting period, and the subsequent rejection or acceptance, shapes asylum seekers' life satisfaction, health, horizontal trust in Swe…
Why Swedes Don’t Wear Face Masks During the Pandemic—A Consequence of Blindly Trusting the Government
Government trust is generally helpful for societies, especially in crisis situations, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, because governments rely on citizens to follow directives. Worldwide, with supporting evidence accumulating, a key directive has been to wear face masks. However, in Sweden, the government has questioned their usefulness. On other behavioral recommendations, such as handwashing, the government has taken a conventional path. …
How the coronavirus crisis affects citizen trust in institutions and in unknown others: Evidence from ‘the Swedish experiment
We study how Swedish citizens updated their institutional and interpersonal trust as the corona crisis evolved from an initial phase to an acute phase in the spring of 2020. The study is based on a large web‐survey panel with adult Swedes (n = 11,406) in which the same individuals were asked the same set of questions at two different time points during the coronavirus pandemic (t0 and t1). The sample was self‐selected but diverse (a smaller subsa…
Did It Really Happen? How the Public Interprets Journalistic Disclaimers
Immediately following dramatic events, news reporting must be both fast and accurate. In an attempt to reconcile the inherent conflict between these two ambitions, journalists often use disclaimers, for example, “unconfirmed” or “reports of.” These disclaimers allow for the rapid publication of less than reliable content. The results from our survey experiment suggest that strong disclaimers, as intended, do lower the perceived reliability of sto…
The moment you decide, you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness
Are politicians more rational decision makers than citizens? This article contributes to the ongoing debate by examining how politicians and citizens assess the fairness of the process leading to a controversial policy decision. It contains theories as to why it is tempting to match the favourability of policy decision with a fairness assessment of the preceding process, and how politicians and citizens differ in their approach to the task. Havin…
In pursuit of happiness: Life satisfaction drives political support
It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well‐being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens a…
Reconsidering the Role of Procedures for Decision Acceptance
Procedural fairness theory posits that the way in which authoritative decisions are made strongly impacts people’s willingness to accept them. This article challenges this claim by contending that democratic governments can achieve little in terms of acceptance of policy decisions by the procedural means at their disposal. Instead, outcome favorability is the dominant determinant of decision acceptance. The article explicates that while central p…
The changing political impact of compassion-evoking pictures: The case of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi
Compassion-evoking and widely circulated news images seem capable of affecting public opinion and change history. A case in point is the picture of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi, who died while trying to escape to Europe with his family in September 2015. We theorise how these types of photos affect public opinion. By relying on panel data with sequentially embedded survey experiments conducted in the aftermath of the picture's publication and w…
Advances in the Study of Democratic Responsiveness: An Introduction
Responsiveness is a central quality of representative democracy. During the past decades, a number of innovative studies have advanced our knowledge about actual responsiveness processes. However, research on the consequences that follow from responsiveness has lagged behind and forms the subject of this special issue. Our introduction identifies a range of conceptual issues that arise as we focus attention on citizens’ reactions to the ways in w…
Responsiveness Beyond Policy Satisfaction: Does It Matter to Citizens
Can politicians facilitate citizen acceptance of unwelcome policy decisions by acting responsively during the decision-making process? We suggest a framework to analyze the responsiveness–acceptance connection and report findings from two studies designed for that purpose. First, we ran a survey experiment to examine how exogenously induced responsiveness actions affect reactions to a policy decision. Second, we conducted a case study to see how …
Contact in context: Does Intergroup Contact Function (Better) in High-Threat Contexts
Are interpersonal contacts effective in reducing group threat and prejudice in all contexts? Studies have found that the contact effect is stronger in regions and countries where large immigrant populations contribute to high levels of contextual group threat This paper tests the robustness of the observed positive association between contextual-level group threat and contact effects by identifying three methodological reasons for why the associa…
External Efficacy and Perceived Responsiveness—Similar but Distinct Concepts
Representation theory obliges representatives to be responsive toward citizens’ wishes and demands between elections. Responsiveness is crucial because it provides citizens with a mechanism to control representatives beyond Election Day ( Dahl, 1971 ; Mansbridge, 2003 ; Pitkin, 1967 ; Powell, 2004 ). This article addresses the subjective side of responsiveness processes: the extent to which citizens believe that representatives are indeed sensiti…
Diverse Workplaces and Interethnic Friendship Formation-A Multilevel Comparison across 21 OECD Countries
We study how workplace diversity affects how native-born populations form interethnic friendship relations. Drawing on network elasticity research, the relationship between functional and cognitive interdependencies, and intergroup contact theory, we argue that diverse workplaces—because they restrict individuals' opportunities to act on tendencies towards homophily more than other social units—have a particularly strong potential for integration…
Migration‐based Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Multilevel Analysis of How Country, Neighbourhood and Workplace Diversity Affects Social Trust in 22 Countries
How does ethnic diversity affect social trust? The conflict hypothesis, which predicts a negative effect, and the contact hypothesis, which predicts a positive effect, represent the main competing answers. This article argues that the ‘true’ answer to the question is contingent upon the social units under study and how they interact. More specifically, it is argued that diversity will have a negative effect on social trust when focusing on social…
Reconsidering the Role of Procedures for Decision Acceptance
Procedural fairness theory posits that the way in which authoritative decisions are made strongly impacts people’s willingness to accept them. This article challenges this claim by contending that democratic governments can achieve little in terms of acceptance of policy decisions by the procedural means at their disposal. Instead, outcome favorability is the dominant determinant of decision acceptance. The article explicates that while central p…
When Does Transparency Generate Legitimacy? Experimenting on a Context‐Bound Relationship
We analyze the main rationale for public administrations and political institutions for supplying transparency, namely, that it generates legitimacy for these institutions. First, we discuss different theories of decision making from which plausible causal mechanisms that may drive a link between transparency and legitimacy may be derived. We find that the common notion of a straightforward positive correlation is naïve and that transparency refo…
How the coronavirus crisis affects citizen trust in institutions and in unknown others: Evidence from ‘the Swedish experiment
We study how Swedish citizens updated their institutional and interpersonal trust as the corona crisis evolved from an initial phase to an acute phase in the spring of 2020. The study is based on a large web‐survey panel with adult Swedes (n = 11,406) in which the same individuals were asked the same set of questions at two different time points during the coronavirus pandemic (t0 and t1). The sample was self‐selected but diverse (a smaller subsa…
Electoral losers revisited - How citizens react to defeat at the ballot box
Responsiveness Beyond Policy Satisfaction: Does It Matter to Citizens
Can politicians facilitate citizen acceptance of unwelcome policy decisions by acting responsively during the decision-making process? We suggest a framework to analyze the responsiveness–acceptance connection and report findings from two studies designed for that purpose. First, we ran a survey experiment to examine how exogenously induced responsiveness actions affect reactions to a policy decision. Second, we conducted a case study to see how …
Which decision‐making arrangements generate the strongest legitimacy beliefs? Evidence from a randomised field experiment
How can democracies satisfy citizens' demands for legitimate decision making? This article reports findings from a randomised field experiment designed to mimic decision making in large‐scale democracies. Natural collectives of individuals with a shared history and future (high school classes) were studied. They were asked to make a decision about how to spend a sum of money under arrangements imposed by the researchers and distributed randomly a…
Advances in the Study of Democratic Responsiveness: An Introduction
Responsiveness is a central quality of representative democracy. During the past decades, a number of innovative studies have advanced our knowledge about actual responsiveness processes. However, research on the consequences that follow from responsiveness has lagged behind and forms the subject of this special issue. Our introduction identifies a range of conceptual issues that arise as we focus attention on citizens’ reactions to the ways in w…
Scandal Fatigue? Scandal Elections and Satisfaction with Democracy in Western Europe, 1977–2007
Elections involving a major scandal were unusual in the late 1970s, but today nearly half are so affected. Multilevel analyses of Eurobarometer data reveal that scandal elections once had negative net effects on satisfaction with democracy. However, as scandals have become more common, the negative effect has withered away. This ‘scandal fatigue’ process appears driven by changes in scandal material, rather than by changes in citizens’ reactions …
Will citizens take no for an answer? What government officials can do to enhance decision acceptance
To what extent can the conduct of government officials help make unfavourable decisions acceptable to those that are affected by them? To provide an answer to this under-explored question, this paper presents findings from two scenario experiments that allow the conduct of individual officials to vary according to a pre-determined standard, while keeping an unfavourable decision constant in a setting that approaches the real world. There are thre…
The effects of direct voting and deliberation on legitimacy beliefs: An Experimental Study of Small Group Decision-Making
In democratic theory, two frequently occurring ideas are that deliberation and direct voting in referendums can increase perceived legitimacy of democratic procedures. To evaluate this claim, we conducted a controlled field experiment in which 215 high school students participated by being subject to a decision on a collective issue. The decision was made either by direct voting or as a non-voting procedure (decision made by the teacher). Additio…
The immigration issue and anti-immigrant party success in Sweden 1970-2006: A deviant case analysis
Electoral success of anti-immigrant parties varies considerably across Western Europe. This article contributes to research on this important matter by analysing which current theories that accounts for the failure of anti-immigrant parties in one national context, Sweden. It draws on an unusually rich set of data to trace important processes from the 1970s up to 2006. It shows that the failure of anti-immigrant parties is not explained by low ci…
External Efficacy and Perceived Responsiveness—Similar but Distinct Concepts
Representation theory obliges representatives to be responsive toward citizens’ wishes and demands between elections. Responsiveness is crucial because it provides citizens with a mechanism to control representatives beyond Election Day ( Dahl, 1971 ; Mansbridge, 2003 ; Pitkin, 1967 ; Powell, 2004 ). This article addresses the subjective side of responsiveness processes: the extent to which citizens believe that representatives are indeed sensiti…
In pursuit of happiness: Life satisfaction drives political support
It is argued in this article that citizens in democracies use their subjective well‐being (SWB) as an evaluative criterion when deciding how willing they are to support and comply with government dictates (political system support). When life is satisfactory, government authorities are rewarded with support, when it is not, citizens punish authorities by withholding their support. To make sense of the relationship, it is suggested that citizens a…
Diverse Workplaces and Interethnic Friendship Formation-A Multilevel Comparison across 21 OECD Countries
We study how workplace diversity affects how native-born populations form interethnic friendship relations. Drawing on network elasticity research, the relationship between functional and cognitive interdependencies, and intergroup contact theory, we argue that diverse workplaces—because they restrict individuals' opportunities to act on tendencies towards homophily more than other social units—have a particularly strong potential for integration…
The changing political impact of compassion-evoking pictures: The case of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi
Compassion-evoking and widely circulated news images seem capable of affecting public opinion and change history. A case in point is the picture of the drowned toddler Alan Kurdi, who died while trying to escape to Europe with his family in September 2015. We theorise how these types of photos affect public opinion. By relying on panel data with sequentially embedded survey experiments conducted in the aftermath of the picture's publication and w…
Ethnic Diversity and Democratic Citizenship: Evidence from a Social Laboratory
Will frequent interethnic personal contacts help Western countries overcome the strains associated with migration-based ethnic diversity? To address this problem, the authors of this article studied a setting – high school – that ‘forces’ individuals to have personal contacts. It is argued that schools are social laboratories from which one can learn about the likely effects of a less-segregated society. Moreover, this study concerns a European n…
The moment you decide, you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness
Are politicians more rational decision makers than citizens? This article contributes to the ongoing debate by examining how politicians and citizens assess the fairness of the process leading to a controversial policy decision. It contains theories as to why it is tempting to match the favourability of policy decision with a fairness assessment of the preceding process, and how politicians and citizens differ in their approach to the task. Havin…
Role Orientations of Members of Parliament
It’s Not Over When It’s Over”―Post-Decision Arrangements and Empirical Legitimacy
A chronic problem for democratic governments is generating legitimacy for policy decisions that go against substantial groups of citizens’ legitimate interests. The primary means of achieving this aim involve the arrangements through which policy decisions are made. Whereas research in the field has tended to focus on the arrangements leading up to a decision, this paper draws attention to developments after a formal policy decision has been made…
Close (Causally Connected) Cousins
Trust in one’s fellow citizens and in politicians are both conducive to well-functioning government. Beyond their separate importance, it is a long-standing notion that generalized social trust and political trust are connected in a mutually reinforcing relationship that further undergirds democratic governance. While it is well established that social trust and political trust are robustly positively associated at the individual level, there is …
Government Responsiveness: A Democratic Value with Negative Externalities
Political equality and responsiveness to citizens are both central values in democracy. Citizens strong in political resources may, however, impress their preferences upon decision makers more effectively than others, meaning that government responsiveness may possibly exacerbate inequality in policy outcomes, especially if participatory democratic arrangements are prevalent. The article studies these processes empirically, drawing on a dataset o…
Migration‐based Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Multilevel Analysis of How Country, Neighbourhood and Workplace Diversity Affects Social Trust in 22 Countries
How does ethnic diversity affect social trust? The conflict hypothesis, which predicts a negative effect, and the contact hypothesis, which predicts a positive effect, represent the main competing answers. This article argues that the ‘true’ answer to the question is contingent upon the social units under study and how they interact. More specifically, it is argued that diversity will have a negative effect on social trust when focusing on social…
Nimbyism - A re-examination of the phenomenon
How to be Gracious about Political Loss—The Importance of Good Loser Messages in Policy Controversies
Accepting defeat in political decision-making is crucial for the health of democracies. At the same time, being a good loser is challenging. How can citizens be motivated to be gracious about various types of political loss? In this paper, we study whether political leaders can play an important role in boosting the perceived quality of decision-making processes among losers in policy conflicts. We propose and test the impact of a simple interven…
Waiting for Asylum: Reduced Institutional and Interpersonal Trust
Refugees arriving in Western countries spend long periods, often over a year, as asylum seekers. We examine how the period affects asylum seekers’ institutional and interpersonal trust. Drawing on theories of need gratification, we suggest that several needs are unfulfilled during this period of existential limbo. Still, some aspects in the new society are positive, especially in Sweden, the host country of this study. To study these combined for…
Years of Swedish Election Campaigns: A Story of the Rise and Decline of Political Parties and the Emergence of the Mass Media as Power Brokers
A framework for descriptive analysis of election campaigns is suggested, emphasizing the parties' use of direct (personal) and indirect (media) channels for voter communication. The direct campaign channels had their heyday during the 1920s and 1930s. Since the 1940s radio and television have dominated the scene. However, the parties maintained control over opinion formation until the breakthrough of an assertive and independent political journal…
Hidden Negativism: Evaluation of Swedish Parties and Their Leaders Under Different Survey Methods
A comparison was made of how Swedish adults evaluated political parties and the party leaders under three different survey methods: in-person interviews, telephone interviews, and mailed questionnaires. Both the party leaders and the parties were evaluated more negatively by people responding on the mailed questionnaires. Telephone and in-person interviewees did not differ significantly. The evidence did not indicate that the mailed questionnaire…
Power in the Swedish Parliament
This article is based on a mail questionnaire sent to members of the Swedish parliament (the Riksdag) in 1988. To increase our understanding of how the institution works, an analysis of members' perceptions of the distribution of power within the Riksdag is undertaken. Members were asked (1) how influential various groups and bodies are, and (2) how influential these groups and bodies should be. The results show that members want more power to be…
Codes of Professionalism: Journalists Versus Politicians in Finland and Sweden
Previous studies have demonstrated that journalists' normative views of `professional journalism' vary between countries. This study shows that context-bound variations in the meaning of journalistic professionalism also encompass conduct in real-world situations. Indeed, we argue that empirical evidence allows us to speak more of a universal code for professional politicians than for professional journalists. For instance, we find evidence of ge…
Attitudes Towards a Fallen Leader: Evaluations of Olof Palme Before and After the Assassination
No event in recent times was more unexpected than the assassination of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, shortly before midnight on 28 February 1986. The murder sent a shock wave throughout the Western world, especially, of course, among Swedish citizens. By noon the next day, virtually all Swedes had learned about his death. People in Sweden displayed their emotions publicly in an unprecedented manner. Church attendance, which had dwindled fo…
Policy representation in Western democracies
Role Orientations of Members of Parliament
Biased attributions regarding the origins of preferences in a group decision situation
The current research investigated biases in attributions of the origins of others' preferences in a group decision situation. In two experiments, students indicated their preferred alternative in a decision on an important issue in their school, and then explained the bases for preferences of those agreeing and disagreeing with them. Results showed that participants saw preferences of those who agreed as more rationally and less externally based …
Ethnic Diversity and Democratic Citizenship: Evidence from a Social Laboratory
Will frequent interethnic personal contacts help Western countries overcome the strains associated with migration-based ethnic diversity? To address this problem, the authors of this article studied a setting – high school – that ‘forces’ individuals to have personal contacts. It is argued that schools are social laboratories from which one can learn about the likely effects of a less-segregated society. Moreover, this study concerns a European n…
Will citizens take no for an answer? What government officials can do to enhance decision acceptance
To what extent can the conduct of government officials help make unfavourable decisions acceptable to those that are affected by them? To provide an answer to this under-explored question, this paper presents findings from two scenario experiments that allow the conduct of individual officials to vary according to a pre-determined standard, while keeping an unfavourable decision constant in a setting that approaches the real world. There are thre…
Electoral losers revisited - How citizens react to defeat at the ballot box
Scandal Fatigue? Scandal Elections and Satisfaction with Democracy in Western Europe, 1977–2007
Elections involving a major scandal were unusual in the late 1970s, but today nearly half are so affected. Multilevel analyses of Eurobarometer data reveal that scandal elections once had negative net effects on satisfaction with democracy. However, as scandals have become more common, the negative effect has withered away. This ‘scandal fatigue’ process appears driven by changes in scandal material, rather than by changes in citizens’ reactions …
Which decision‐making arrangements generate the strongest legitimacy beliefs? Evidence from a randomised field experiment
How can democracies satisfy citizens' demands for legitimate decision making? This article reports findings from a randomised field experiment designed to mimic decision making in large‐scale democracies. Natural collectives of individuals with a shared history and future (high school classes) were studied. They were asked to make a decision about how to spend a sum of money under arrangements imposed by the researchers and distributed randomly a…
The immigration issue and anti-immigrant party success in Sweden 1970-2006: A deviant case analysis
Electoral success of anti-immigrant parties varies considerably across Western Europe. This article contributes to research on this important matter by analysing which current theories that accounts for the failure of anti-immigrant parties in one national context, Sweden. It draws on an unusually rich set of data to trace important processes from the 1970s up to 2006. It shows that the failure of anti-immigrant parties is not explained by low ci…
The effects of direct voting and deliberation on legitimacy beliefs: An Experimental Study of Small Group Decision-Making
In democratic theory, two frequently occurring ideas are that deliberation and direct voting in referendums can increase perceived legitimacy of democratic procedures. To evaluate this claim, we conducted a controlled field experiment in which 215 high school students participated by being subject to a decision on a collective issue. The decision was made either by direct voting or as a non-voting procedure (decision made by the teacher). Additio…
Migration‐based Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Multilevel Analysis of How Country, Neighbourhood and Workplace Diversity Affects Social Trust in 22 Countries
How does ethnic diversity affect social trust? The conflict hypothesis, which predicts a negative effect, and the contact hypothesis, which predicts a positive effect, represent the main competing answers. This article argues that the ‘true’ answer to the question is contingent upon the social units under study and how they interact. More specifically, it is argued that diversity will have a negative effect on social trust when focusing on social…
Government Responsiveness: A Democratic Value with Negative Externalities
Political equality and responsiveness to citizens are both central values in democracy. Citizens strong in political resources may, however, impress their preferences upon decision makers more effectively than others, meaning that government responsiveness may possibly exacerbate inequality in policy outcomes, especially if participatory democratic arrangements are prevalent. The article studies these processes empirically, drawing on a dataset o…
When Does Transparency Generate Legitimacy? Experimenting on a Context‐Bound Relationship
We analyze the main rationale for public administrations and political institutions for supplying transparency, namely, that it generates legitimacy for these institutions. First, we discuss different theories of decision making from which plausible causal mechanisms that may drive a link between transparency and legitimacy may be derived. We find that the common notion of a straightforward positive correlation is naïve and that transparency refo…
Nimbyism - A re-examination of the phenomenon
External Efficacy and Perceived Responsiveness—Similar but Distinct Concepts
Representation theory obliges representatives to be responsive toward citizens’ wishes and demands between elections. Responsiveness is crucial because it provides citizens with a mechanism to control representatives beyond Election Day ( Dahl, 1971 ; Mansbridge, 2003 ; Pitkin, 1967 ; Powell, 2004 ). This article addresses the subjective side of responsiveness processes: the extent to which citizens believe that representatives are indeed sensiti…
Diverse Workplaces and Interethnic Friendship Formation-A Multilevel Comparison across 21 OECD Countries
We study how workplace diversity affects how native-born populations form interethnic friendship relations. Drawing on network elasticity research, the relationship between functional and cognitive interdependencies, and intergroup contact theory, we argue that diverse workplaces—because they restrict individuals' opportunities to act on tendencies towards homophily more than other social units—have a particularly strong potential for integration…
Contact in context: Does Intergroup Contact Function (Better) in High-Threat Contexts
Are interpersonal contacts effective in reducing group threat and prejudice in all contexts? Studies have found that the contact effect is stronger in regions and countries where large immigrant populations contribute to high levels of contextual group threat This paper tests the robustness of the observed positive association between contextual-level group threat and contact effects by identifying three methodological reasons for why the associa…
Advances in the Study of Democratic Responsiveness: An Introduction
Responsiveness is a central quality of representative democracy. During the past decades, a number of innovative studies have advanced our knowledge about actual responsiveness processes. However, research on the consequences that follow from responsiveness has lagged behind and forms the subject of this special issue. Our introduction identifies a range of conceptual issues that arise as we focus attention on citizens’ reactions to the ways in w…
Responsiveness Beyond Policy Satisfaction: Does It Matter to Citizens
Can politicians facilitate citizen acceptance of unwelcome policy decisions by acting responsively during the decision-making process? We suggest a framework to analyze the responsiveness–acceptance connection and report findings from two studies designed for that purpose. First, we ran a survey experiment to examine how exogenously induced responsiveness actions affect reactions to a policy decision. Second, we conducted a case study to see how …
Reconsidering the Role of Procedures for Decision Acceptance
Procedural fairness theory posits that the way in which authoritative decisions are made strongly impacts people’s willingness to accept them. This article challenges this claim by contending that democratic governments can achieve little in terms of acceptance of policy decisions by the procedural means at their disposal. Instead, outcome favorability is the dominant determinant of decision acceptance. The article explicates that while central p…
Political science (37 works) · Psychology (29 works) · Law (25 works) · Economics (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Politics (21 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · Social Psychology (20 works)