THE EFFECTS OF JUDICIAL TRANSPARENCY ON PUBLIC TRUST: EVIDENCE FROM A FIELD EXPERIMENT
| Author | STEPHAN GRIMMELIKHUIJSEN,ALBERT KLIJN |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12149 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12149
THE EFFECTS OF JUDICIAL TRANSPARENCY ON
PUBLIC TRUST: EVIDENCE FROM A FIELD EXPERIMENT
STEPHAN GRIMMELIKHUIJSEN AND ALBERT KLIJN
Trustin judges is needed for voluntary acceptance of judicial decisions, and judicial transparency is
thought to strengthen trust. It exposes the public to symbols that embrace a ‘myth of legality’ which
is expected to have a positive effect on trust. Weassess a specic understanding of transparency and
trust by looking at the moderating effect of knowledge and predisposition to trust. We report on a
eld experiment which investigates the effect of a Dutch television series on trust. Findings show
that judicial transparency indeed has a positive effect on trust. Moreover,our analysis demonstrates
that it has the strongest effects on individuals with medium prior knowledge about the judiciary.
However, higher predisposition to trust mitigated the effect of transparency, indicating a ceiling
effect. This sustains the idea that the unique traits of visual judicial transparency expose typical
judicial symbols that imply that impartiality which increases trust in judges.
INTRODUCTION
The legitimacy of judges is widely thought to be crucial for voluntary acceptance of judi-
cial decisions and maintaining social order (Tyler 2006), and trust is a central component
of this. Transparency is seen as an important means of strengtheningcitizen trust (Gibson
and Caldeira 2009; Worthy 2010; Meijer et al. 2012). However, there is intense debate in
the academic literature about whether transparency really contributes to trust or whether
it even diminishes citizen trust in institutions (Meijer 2009). Indeed, an emerging body
of empirical work has offered some evidence that transparency can have negative or at
best subdued effects on citizen trust (Worthy 2010; De Fine Licht 2011; Grimmelikhuijsen
2012), which is supposedly due to the exposure of the inherent processes of political
decision-making that people dislike, for instance bargaining, brokering, and deal-making
in political institutions (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995, 2002; Gibson and Caldeira 2009;
Grimmelikhuijsen 2010).
Most work in this area has focused exclusively on the transparency of political
institutions and political decision-making, while at the same time researchers have
acknowledged the context-dependency of the effects of transparency on trust and legiti-
macy (Grimmelikhuijsen et al. 2013; Meijer 2013; De Fine Licht 2014). Therefore, we want
to further our understanding by investigating the effects of transparency on trust in a
crucial and contextually very different institution: the judiciary. The judiciary works
differently from political institutions on a critical point, as it is expected to make impar-
tial, independent, and non-political decisions. Transparency exposes people to symbols
that embrace this ‘myth of legality’ (Gibson and Caldeira 2009). These symbols are of
particular importance as citizens often lack in-depth knowledge about the judiciary and
therefore make symbolic evaluations (Tyler 1998, p. 849; Van de Walle 2009).
Typicalsymbols such as a gavel, a courtroom, or a gown convey the message that courts
are indeed different from other institutions. The message that these symbols put across
is that not bargaining or compromise, but impartial and non-political decision-making,
take place within courts. For instance, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (1995) found that more
Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen is in the School of Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Albert Klijn is at the
Trainingand Study Centre for the Judiciary, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Public Administration Vol.93, No. 4, 2015 (995–1011)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
996 STEPHAN GRIMMELIKHUIJSEN AND ALBERT KLIJN
awareness of the Congress led to less support, whereas increased awareness of the
Supreme Court led to more support for this institution. Based on prior work by Gibson
and Caldeira (2009) on media exposure of the Supreme Court, we expect that exposure to
these symbols triggers a positivity bias. This bias entails that citizens have certain beliefs
about the judiciary that are generally positive. From early in life people are taught that
judges are impartial and different. When exposed to typical judicial symbols, these latent
positive attitudes of citizens are ‘woken up’ by the symbols that remind citizens of the
impartiality of the judiciary (Gibson et al. 1998; Gibson and Caldeira 2009).
This study seeks to contribute to our understanding of transparency in two ways. First,
we conducted a general analysis to assess whether judicial transparency indeed has a pos-
itive effect on trust in judges. The second goal of this article is to test a more specic under-
standing of the effect of transparency. Based on theoretical notions we test how attitudinal
changes are affected by pre-existing attitudes and knowledge (Petty and Caccioppi 1986;
Bohner 2001; Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer 2014). Individuals process information differ-
ently if they have certain beliefs or attitudes concerning the relevant topic. Wehypothesize
that citizens with a great deal of knowledge about judges are less receptive to change their
trust in this institution. Furthermore, we expect that transparency conrms existing predis-
positions, that is, positively predisposed citizens become even more trusting; negatively
predisposed individuals become less trusting.
The central question we deal with in our article is: To what extent does transparency affect
trust in judges and how is this effect related to individual predispositions to trust and knowledge?
In order to assess the question we rely on a eld experiment that was carried out in
cooperation with a Dutch District Court. The study we report on consisted of a television
show about a District Court in the Netherlands that allowed a public television company
to cover its daily work. Day-to-day cases were taped and in combination with footage of
commentary, deliberations, and personal interviews with judges, were broadcast in eight
evening shows. In this sense the series was different from regular mass media coverage
mostly focusing on high-prole cases.
TRANSPARENCY AND TRUST IN JUDGES
Many denitions and operationalizations of trust are used by researchers in the social sci-
ences. However, across disciplines it is generally acknowledged that two conditions are
important with regard to trust: (1) a degree of ‘risk’; and (2) ‘interdependence’ (Luhmann
1979; Zucker 1986). Risk and interdependence are crucial because trust is a threefold rela-
tionship, in which A trusts B to do X (Hardin 1993). In other words, A expects B to do
a certain thing which is in his/her interest. This threefold relation yields a risk as citi-
zens are uncertain as to whether an institution (e.g. the judiciary) actually carries out its
tasks the way it is entrusted to. Risk is invoked because government institutions exert a
certain degree of power over citizens, which can be used properly or not. Without uncer-
tainty about what an organization does with the trust placed in it there would be no need
for trust (Lewis and Weigert 1985). On the other hand, some knowledge is thought to be
needed in the process of building trust (Hardin 2002).
Based on these conditions, Rousseau et al. (1998) created a much-used multidisciplinary
denition of trust: trust is ‘a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnera-
bility based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another’ (Rousseau
et al. 1998, p. 395). With regard to judges, these expectations are to a largeextent connected
with the notion of ‘procedural fairness’. The centrality of procedural fairness as a driver
Public Administration Vol.93, No. 4, 2015 (995–1011)
© 2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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