The Public Understanding of Political Integrity: The Case for Probity Perceptions

178 Pages·2014·3.45 MB·English

by  Jonathan Rose (auth.)

The Public Understanding of Political Integrity
Political Corruption and Governance series
Series editors:
Paul M. Heywoodis Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Sir Francis Hill
Professor of European Politics, University of Nottingham, UK.
Dan Houghis Reader in Politics and Director of the Sussex Centre for the
Study of Corruption (SCSC) at the University of Sussex.
This series aims to analyse the nature and scope of, as well as possible remedies
for, political corruption. The rise to prominence over the last 15 years of
corruption-related problems and of the ‘good governance’ agenda as the
principal means to tackle them has led to the development of a plethora of
(national and international) policy proposals, international agreements and
anti-corruption programmes and initiatives. National governments,
international organisations and NGOs all now claim to take very seriously the
need to tackle issues of corruption. It is thus unsurprising that over the last
decade and a half, a significant body of work with a wide and varied focus has
been published in academic journals and in international discussion papers.
This series seeks to provide a forum through which to address this growing
body of literature. It will invite not just in-depth single country analyses of
corruption and attempts to combat it, but also comparative studies that
explore the experiences of different states (or regions) in dealing with different
types of corruption. We also invite monographs that take an overtly thematic
focus, analysing trends and developments in one type of corruption across
either time or space, as well as theoretically informed analysis of discrete
events.
Titles include:
Bruce Buchan and Lisa Hill
AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION
Dan Hough
CORRUPTION, ANTI-CORRUPTION AND GOVERNANCE
Jonathan Rose
THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL INTEGRITY
The Case for Probity Perceptions
Political Corruption and Governance series
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The Public Understanding
of Political Integrity
The Case for Probity Perceptions
Jonathan Rose
School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
© Jonathan Rose 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-34374-1
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
List of Tables and Figures vii
1 Introduction 1
Part I Foundations 19
2 Latent Variables: Measures and Implications 21
3 Process Performance and Political Trust: Structural Models 46
Part II Causes of Perceptions of Public Probity 69
4 Partisan Co-alignment and Perceptions of Public Probity 71
5 ‘Why We Hate Politics’? The Impact of Negative Political 89
Events upon Political Perceptions of Public Probity
6 Perceptions of Public Probity after ‘MPs’ Expenses’: 107
The Impact of the Local MP’s Performance
7 Conclusion: Public Probity 122
Notes for Policymakers 132
Appendices 134
Notes 149
Bibliography 160
Index 171
v
Acknowledgements
As with any book, the production of this work would not have been
possible without a significant amount of help and support from a wide
variety of people and organisations. In particular, I would like to thank
Prof. Cees van der Eijk (University of Nottingham) who has provided
immeasurable support in the development of this study, and who has
had a profound effect upon my own methodological training. I would
also like to thank Dr. Lauren McLaren (University of Nottingham) and
Peter Hawthorne (Committee on Standards in Public Life, UK), who both
provided very helpful and considered feedback upon an earlier version of
this manuscript; this book is substantially better for their involvement.
I must also thank the ESRC and Committee on Standards in Public
Life (CSPL), who both provided funding and support for the initial
stages of this project (project ES/G004544/1). In particular, this project
could not have been completed without the help of the CSPL, whose
data I analyse here. Being mindful of public beliefs is incredibly impor-
tant for every political system, and the CSPL should be heartily con-
gratulated for their work in this regard. It is very easy to disregard the
public’s attitudes, and very hard to consider them properly; the will-
ingness of the CSPL to take on this project should reflect positively
upon them. I am also very grateful for funding from the ESRC and
Hong Kong Research Grants Council, which has provided me with the
opportunity to complete this manuscript (project RES-000-22-4407).
I would also like to thank the R Development Core Team, as well as
the numerous authors of libraries used in this book, for developing one
of the most powerful tools available for statistical analysis, and giving
it away freely. Free (‘Open Source’) Software is incredibly important
academically, and the ability to investigate the functioning of libraries
down to the base code has been useful on more than one occasion.
I have, of course, special thanks for my family: in particular, my wife,
Ceri; my son, Noah; and my daughter, Georgia, whose impending
birth was a particularly effective motivator to finish this book in a
timely fashion. Ceri has been incredibly supportive during the whole
of this project; I would have struggled to produce anything, let alone a
full manuscript, without her help and support.
Finally, I would also like to thank the series editors Profs. Dan Hough
and Paul Heywood, along with the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan.
vi
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
Table 1.1 Percentage of British citizens expressing trust in 5
three groups of professionals
Table 1.2 Survey information 14
Table 2.1 Results of a Mokken scale analysis of three 35
batteries of items
Table 2.2 Results of a Mokken scale analysis of all items 37
simultaneously
Table 3.1 Comparative structural model fit 64
Table 4.1 A typology of unqualified co-alignment 77
Table 4.2 A typology of qualified co-alignment 77
Table 4.3 Predictors of perceived public probity at the 84
national level
Table 4.4 Predictors of perceived public probity in Scotland 86
Table 5.1 Average NPE ‘treatment’ effects 104
Table 6.1 Impact of local MPs’ ‘expenses’ involvement upon 118
perceptions of public probity
Figures
Figure 2.1 Graphical representation of a latent variable model 23
Figure 3.1 Model 5: A reciprocal model of political trust and 63
political performance
Figure 5.1 Mentions of ‘Derek Conway’ in UK national 97
newspapers
vii
1
Introduction
This book makes a case for the importance of citizens’ perceptions of
public probity for our understanding of how citizens relate to their
state. As it is conceived of in this study, ‘public probity’ can usefully be
thought of as ‘playing by the rules’ or the ‘spirit of public service’:
public probity is less about a set of formal, prescriptive rules, more an
exhortation to the appropriate exercise of public office. Such a focus
upon the ‘rules of the game’ results in the primary concern of this
study being about the processof governing, as opposed to the outcomes
governors can produce. Intuitively, we would expect how citizens eval-
uate governors on these dimensions to be particularly important for
understanding citizen disaffection, and moreover how citizens relate to
the political circumstances that confront them. Yet there has been
little academic or practitioner-led investigation into such matters. Thus
we are left with little more than the suggestion that ‘public probity’ is a
useful tool (either conceptually or empirically) for evaluating percep-
tions of the political world. Using a series of detailed analyses upon a
major newly available series of datasets, this study examines the utility
of a public probity-focused approach to understanding citizen disaffec-
tion, and makes a case for deeper and more searching research into this
area. In short: this book shows that perceptions of public probity
matter: that they are coherent, substantively meaningful, responsive,
and that they cannot be explained away simply by ephemeral political
events. In doing so, this study also presents new substantive findings
about the causes of political perceptions and the consequences of polit-
ical realities.
The lack of attention paid to perceptions of the processof governing
within academic literature is interesting, given that it remains an
important evaluative criterion for political systems as a whole. Political
1
2 The Public Understanding of Political Integrity
systems can be evaluated on at least two criteria: whether the system
can produce desired ‘outcomes’, and the process by which those out-
comes are created. ‘Outcomes’ are evidently important for any political
system. Indeed, it is plausible to claim that the primary purpose of any
political system is to produce outcomes that are desired by the polit-
ically relevant actors (a similar point is noted by Easton, 1965, p.230).
Yet procedural issues are also important; it matters how decisions come
to be made and how policies are implemented (see Rothstein, 2011).
Hitherto, much academic discussion has focused upon the ‘output’
question. In particular, there has been a strong focus upon the extent
to which the policies espoused by political candidates and parties
match the policy preferences of citizens, particularly the median voter,
and the consequences of this (see for example Downs, 1957; Stimson,
1999; Powell, 2000; Klingemann et al., 2006; van der Eijk and Franklin,
2009).1Even within the less outcome-orientated, more explicitly attitu-
dinal literature, the role of the political process is often under-
considered (see for example, Miller, 1974; Citrin, 1974; Miller and
Borrelli, 1991; Hetherington, 1998, p.795; Newton and Norris, 2000;
Clarke et al., 2009, pp.296–301; for important exceptions see Tyler,
1994; Gibson and Caldeira, 1995; van den Bos et al., 1998; Tyler, 2000;
Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2001; Mishler and Rose, 2001; Carman,
2010; Lascoumes, 2010; Doherty and Wolak, 2012; Rose and Heywood,
2013; Licht et al., in press). Thus, we are left with relatively little in-
formation about whether, for example, a dictatorship that (more or less)
consistently produced the desired outcome of the median voter would
be an acceptable institutional arrangement for citizens. A priori, it may
be assumed that if citizens are ‘rational’, and a dictatorship can deliver
acceptable outcomes, a dictatorship would be as acceptable as a well
performing democracy. Yet, even though citizens often express high
levels of dissatisfaction with the functioning of their political systems
(Hay, 2007), a large majority of citizens report that they consider
democracy to the best form of government (Hay, 2007, p.32; see also
Norris, 2011, p.93). Clearly something is missing when analyses focus
so heavily upon outcomes. A narrow focus upon outcomes alone thus
seems problematic. Analysing perceptions of public probity allows us
to go some way towards understanding the importance of such pro-
cedural matters.
In addressing the ‘process’ question, this study adds to a relatively
small literature concerning the impact of political processes, indepen-
dent of outputs, upon citizens’ beliefs. Moreover, the focus of this
study – perceived public probity – represents an under-utilised way of