What explains judicial trust?

Scholars interested in understanding confidence in political institutions traditionally turn to David Easton's (Reference Easton1965) analysis of political systems, namely the concepts of diffuse and specific support. While diffuse support is ‘a reservoir of favorable attitudes or good will that helps members to accept or tolerate outputs to which they are opposed or the effects of which they see as damaging to their wants’ (Easton Reference Easton1965: 273), specific support is more akin to a positive evaluation of a particular decision. Eugene Miller (Reference Miller1971: 201) further clarifies that diffuse support ‘is support for a political object for its own sake rather than for what the individual expects to derive from it’. Expected personal gains fall within the domain of specific support. While some debate the need for such conceptual distinctions as well as their meanings (see Citrin Reference Citrin1974; Mishler and Rose Reference Mishler and Rose1997), we subscribe to Pippa Norris's (Reference Norris1999) view that diffuse and specific support are two ends of a continuum of trust. Institutional trust falls closer to specific support, as the line between the office and the officeholders is often unclear from the perspective of survey respondents (Citrin Reference Citrin1974).

Relatedly, confidence in institutions should not be interpreted as synonymous with institutional legitimacy (Driscoll and Nelson Reference Driscoll and Nelson2018). We focus on trust rather than legitimacy for several reasons. First, as a practical matter ‘trust’ more closely corresponds to ‘confidence’, which matches the question wording found in many regional and worldwide omnibus surveys. Additionally, individuals who report little confidence in the functioning of the judiciary may not necessarily view the judiciary as illegitimate, per se, or believe that it should be dismantled. Nonetheless, this lack of confidence may still impact how that individual interacts with or views the state. Likewise, believing that the judiciary should exist (that it is a legitimate and necessary part of a democratic government) is not the same as believing that the judiciary is a viable forum for the provision of justice in the status quo. Because we are interested in understanding how institutional factors impact citizens' perceptions of justice, we focus on confidence, or trust, rather than the overall legitimacy of judicial institutions.

We test hypotheses related to two main aspects of institutional quality and design, what scholars of institutional trust refer to as ‘process’, and control for factors that scholars of institutional trust characterize as ‘performance’ (system-wide outputs, such as economic conditions). With respect to ‘process’, scholars in this literature argue that citizens evaluate institutions based on the extent to which the ideals of fairness and equality are realized by the rules, procedures, norms and structures that guide and constrain the functioning of political institutions and the behaviour of the state and political actors. Where citizens can rely on institutions to provide expected services without resorting to extralegal measures, citizens ought to have greater faith in their government and political institutions overall (Norris Reference Norris2011; van der Meer and Hakhverdian Reference van der Meer and Hakhverdian2017).

Application of ‘process’ to the judiciary is straightforward: citizens will deem well-functioning (or high-quality) judicial systems as more trustworthy. In the judicial politics literature, judicial system quality can be understood in terms of ‘rule of law’ (Domingo and Sieder Reference Domingo and Sieder2001) or the idea that all individuals and institutions are equally held accountable to the law. Rule of law is of course multidimensional, but generally speaking it can be understood to indicate or proxy for the overall level of judicial system quality in a given context. The idea is that well-functioning courts are more likely to activate diffuse and specific support, especially with regard to the judiciary (Boateng and Adjorlolo Reference Boateng and Adjorlolo2019; Bühlmann and Kunz Reference Bühlmann and Kunz2011; Salzman and Ramsey Reference Salzman and Ramsey2013). As such, we hypothesize that:

In our analysis, we operationalize judicial system quality with a multidimensional index of rule of law, which also enables the disaggregation of ‘rule of law’ into many component sub-indices, which include specific institutional factors such as access to justice and legal transparency (see Online Appendix, Table A3, for a comprehensive list).

A second approach to ‘process’ focuses on the presence and extent of corruption as an indicator of institutional quality. Indeed, among the more robust findings in studies conducted across the world is that greater levels of society-wide corruption negatively correlate with trust in political institutions (Boateng and Adjorlolo Reference Boateng and Adjorlolo2019; Chang and Chu Reference Chang and Chu2006; Hakhverdian and Mayne Reference Hakhverdian and Mayne2012; Norris Reference Norris1999; Salzman and Ramsey Reference Salzman and Ramsey2013; Tyler Reference Tyler1990; van der Meer and Hakhverdian Reference van der Meer and Hakhverdian2017; van Erkel and van der Meer Reference van Erkel and van der Meer2016). Simply, the expectation is that where corruption is greater citizens will be cognizant of that corruption and be less trusting of institutions, especially those that are the ostensible stewards of justice, fairness and the rule of law.

Yet corruption takes a variety of different forms, ranging from million-dollar corruption scandals to small bribes or kickbacks that grease the wheels of day-to-day bureaucracy. Several studies assess the effects of corruption on trust by assuming society-wide corruption will be perceived and punished (e.g. Hakhverdian and Mayne Reference Hakhverdian and Mayne2012; Salzman and Ramsey Reference Salzman and Ramsey2013). But since corruption is (often) an illegal act, the corrupt attempt to conceal their actions. The consequence is that the true or objective rate of society-wide corruption might not be easily observable or perceptible for the average citizen.Footnote ¹ Furthermore, such a formulation assumes a minimum level of concern, awareness or interest on the part of all citizens. Failing that, it might be the case that corruption affects trust by operating through personal exposure to such acts, either by offering or being solicited for bribes, or perhaps having personal knowledge of a corrupt act. We thus disaggregate this hypothesis into institutional and micro-level sub-hypotheses:

Finally, recent studies of corruption and institutional trust have found the effects of various institutional or macro-level factors are not uniform across citizenries. Specifically, several studies have identified how education conditions or moderates such effects. The idea is that better-educated individuals (sometimes described as ‘politically sophisticated’ citizens) are equipped to identify and credibly discern information regarding corruption when it emerges (e.g. Weitz-Shapiro and Winters Reference Weitz-Shapiro and Winters2017).Footnote ² The better educated, moreover, are expected to more strongly disapprove of corruption (Hakhverdian and Mayne Reference Hakhverdian and Mayne2012) and therefore punish corrupt politicians at the polls or downgrade their trust in institutions.Footnote ³ Though it is not clear that disapproval expressed in surveys translates into real-world punishment of corruption, Taylor Boas et al. (Reference Boas, Hidalgo and Melo2019) find that it nonetheless signals commitment to anticorruption norms. As a result, better-educated individuals might be most likely to become disillusioned with political institutions in contexts of corruption. This may be especially relevant to judicial trust because scholars generally describe judicial institutions as complex, bureaucratic and confusing to ordinary citizens to begin with (e.g., Cowan Reference Cowan2004). Following the corruption literature, we hypothesize that individuals' level of education – which is thought to indicate the capacities to discern corruption and understand the workings and complexities of the judicial system – will moderate the effects of these institutional variables. We test this hypothesis in two ways:

Data and methods

To test these hypotheses, we compile a multilevel data set comprised of Latinobarometer public opinion surveys and experts' assessments of country-level institutions collected by the V-Dem Institute, Transparency International and other organizations.Footnote ⁴ The resulting data set allows us to estimate the hypothesized effects of macro-level institutional and micro-level factors, as well as the hypothesized cross-level interactions. The long-standing Latinobarometer survey not only spans more than three decades, but offers the greatest consistency in question wordings and availability, enabling cross-sectional and cross-temporal analysis. Because the independence and legitimacy of courts and judicial institutions are in part functions of (and critical to) democracy, we exclude non-democracies from our sample (countries with a Polity IV score of less than 6 in a given country-year).Footnote ⁵ After accounting for missingness, the sample contains 211,470 observations nested in countries, nested in years. Due to survey instrument variations that result in missingness in key variables, our analysis includes survey waves from 2001 to 2016.

Dependent variable

We measure trust in the courts, our dependent variable, with a survey item asking respondents how much confidence they have in the judiciary. Respondents report their level of confidence on a four-point Likert scale, comprising a lot, some, little, or no confidence. We analyse these responses as a continuous variable and centre values at zero such that reports of little or no confidence register as negative and some or a lot of confidence as positive. Figure 1 shows that public confidence in the courts oscillates considerably around the over-time mean in almost all countries. Overall, confidence hovers in the territory of scepticism to mistrust. Uruguay and Costa Rica exhibit exceptionally high levels of trust over time, with average evaluations just shy of positive. Peru and Ecuador, by contrast, exhibit the lowest levels of trust over time, with decidedly negative evaluations. Those familiar with the region will not be surprised to see Uruguay and Costa Rica, two of the region's most stable and wealthy third-wave democracies, with the highest levels of trust in a democratic institution. But wealth and democracy are poor predictors of judicial trust beyond these exceptional cases. Indeed, Argentina and Chile, two other wealthy and stable third-wave democracies, exhibit disparate levels of trust in the courts. Correlation coefficients bear out these casual observations, indicating weak relationships between judicial trust and GDP per capita (ρ = 0.26) and Polity IV (ρ = 0.22) in a given country-year.

Figure 1. Proportion of Respondents Reporting Judicial Trust, 1995–2017

Notes: Confidence is measured on a four-point Likert scale (no, little, some, or a lot of confidence), centred at 0 and ranging from −1.5 to 1.5. The straight line is the country's survey-weighted over-time mean.

Judicial trust is measured in the Latinobarometer survey using a four-point Likert scale (no, a little, some, or a lot of confidence). We centre the scale at zero, with responses ranging from −1.5 to 1.5, such that negative responses take on negative values and positive responses positive values. In analysing these responses, we present and discuss estimated effect sizes in Likert units. We also discuss these substantive effects as percentages of the full range of the Likert scale (effectively dividing substantive effects by three).

Analysis

Table 1 displays OLS estimates from models of judicial trust, including country and survey-year fixed effects. Model 1 estimates the effect of education and exposure to corruption, relevant to Hypotheses 2 and 3. The model estimates that one's personal exposure to corruption significantly decreases judicial trust by 0.08 Likert points, as predicted (Hypothesis 2b). Relative to respondents with less than primary education, respondents with primary education are 0.02 points less trusting of the court, and those with university education more trusting by 0.04 points. We do not hypothesize any specific direct effect of education, though this baseline model suggests that education correlates positively with judicial trust. Given the large number of micro-level observations, however, the estimated effects are substantively small, ranging from 3% of the full scale range (exposure to corruption) to less than 1% (primary education).

Table 1. OLS Models of Judicial Trust

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ⁺ p < 0.1. All models include country and survey-year fixed effects. Model 4 analyses 2002 data only and includes country fixed effects.

Model 2 adds demographic and political controls. The estimated effect of corruption exposure is similar in size and significance, though the estimated effects of education differ, with only primary and secondary education correlating negatively with judicial trust. In models 2 and 3 we see a clear dip in trust among the primary educated, followed by a steady increase among the high-school and university educated. Controls for age, gender and household wealth have significant, but substantively small, negative effects, whereas SES has a small and significant positive effect. Model 2 also estimates that, relative to non-ideologues, all ideologues (and especially conservatives) are more trusting of the court. Conservative ideology is associated with a 0.22-point (7%) increase in judicial trust, roughly twice as high as centrist or leftist ideology. Relative to Catholics, those with other or no religious beliefs are also estimated to be less trusting of the court, though these effects are substantively small.

Model 3 adds additional controls from the institutional trust literature and for political interest and engagement. The estimated effect of exposure to corruption decreases in size in this model but remains significant.Footnote ¹⁰ The estimated negative effects of primary and secondary education are robust to the inclusion of all controls in this model. All added controls are significant correlates of judicial trust. Of these, the most substantively significant predictors are trust in the police (0.3 points or 10% of the scale range) and one's satisfaction with democracy overall (0.13 points or 4% of the scale range). As predicted by the institutional trust literature, such ‘performance’ factors as subjective economic evaluations (along with democratic satisfaction) are significant predictors of trust.

Model 4 includes controls from the judicial politics literature and limits the sample to the 2002 survey round. We offer a word of caution in placing too much weight on these findings, as they come from a single survey round from two decades ago. Nonetheless, these data provide a significant (and otherwise non-existent) opportunity to test these hypotheses from the judicial political literature on a wide scale in Latin America. As predicted by the judicial politics literature, experience with the courts and perceptions of fairness before the law significantly shape judicial trust. Relative to those with no court experience, those with an experience deemed unjust are 0.09 points (or 3%) less trusting, whereas those with a positive experience are indistinguishable from those without court experience. Similarly, those who believe marginal or vulnerable groups do not have their rights respected are 0.13 points (or 4% of the scale range) less trusting of the court. Above and beyond these controls, this model estimates a significant negative effect of exposure to corruption, but the estimated effect of education is indistinguishable from zero.

Overall, models of micro-level correlates of judicial trust provide modest support for Hypothesis 2b, that individuals who are personally exposed to corruption are less trusting of the judiciary. Education, by contrast, does not appear to have any consistent, clearly monotonic or significant independent effect on judicial trust.

We turn now to macro-level institutional factors. Figure 2 displays scatter plots of country-level correlations between the relevant institutional variables (society-wide corruption and judicial quality) and the mean level of judicial trust in a given survey year. Overall, institutional factors correlate modestly with overall levels of judicial trust among the public. As predicted, society-wide corruption (as measured by the CPI) is negatively correlated with mean judicial trust (ρ = −0.35) and V-Dem's rule of law index is positively correlated (ρ = 0.32).

Figure 2. Scatter Plots of Corruption and Rule of Law Indices with Judicial Trust

Note: Y-axis indicates country-year means of judicial trust. CPI = Corruption Perception Index.

Table 2 presents random intercept models of judicial trust and incorporates country-level institutional factors to assess Hypotheses 1, 2a and 3. We include both the CPI and V-Dem's rule of law index in our analyses, as well as the access to justice and legal transparency sub-indices. In each model we control for GDP per capita (state capacity proxy) and the Polity IV score. Because of the small number of country observations, we add each institutional variable individually in models 5 through 8. The effect of GDP per capita is significant in three of four models, but this effect is negative and substantively small. A $1,000 increase in GDP per capita is estimated to decrease average levels of judicial trust by 0.02 points (or less than 1% of the scale range). Notably, the Polity IV democracy measure does not correlate with judicial trust, though this may not be surprising given that our sample excludes non-democracies. Table A12 in the Online Appendix replicates these models substituting V-Dem's electoral democracy index. These estimates are also insignificant.

Table 2. Random Intercept Models of Judicial Trust

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. * p < 0.05, ⁺ p < 0.1. Factor variables computed relative to the following baseline categories: Education: < primary, Ideology: none, Religion: Catholic, Regime preferences: indifferent, Court experience: none.

Once controlling for micro-level determinants, institutional factors associated with corruption or the rule of law are estimated to correlate significantly, but unevenly, with judicial trust on average. The exception in Table 2 is corruption, which is estimated to affect judicial trust negatively and substantially. Moving from the least to the highest levels of the CPI score is estimated to decrease average trust by 0.4 points (or 13% of the scale range). The significance of this effect, however, is dependent on operationalization. Table A13 in the Online Appendix replicates model 5 with alternative measures of corruption (including measures of judiciary-specific corruption), and only the CPI measure correlates significantly. Rule of law and the access to justice and legal transparency sub-indices similarly do not correlate significantly, on average. In our supplemental analyses, we disaggregate the rule of law index and estimate the effect of sub-indices on judicial trust and similarly find uneven effects. Sub-indices that do correlate positively and significantly include judicial accountability and compliance, as well as the absence of judicial purges and reforms that aim to weaken the judiciary.

Of course, the small number of country observations in the sample means that country-level factors are estimated with less efficiency than micro-level factors, which remain strong and consistent predictors of judicial trust. Despite this, random intercept models provide some support for Hypotheses 1 and 2a: institutional factors are estimated to have modestly direct, if uneven, effects on the average levels of judicial trust.

Finally, we assess whether these average effects vary significantly by level of education, (Hypotheses 3a and 3b). To do so, we estimate models that interact institutional factors with respondents' education. Figure 3 presents point estimates of the average effect of institutions conditional on respondent education (full model estimates are available in Online Appendix Table A6). Interactive models replicate those in Table 2 with the addition of interaction terms. As in Table 2, interaction terms are added individually for each institutional variable. All models contain main effects for education and institutional variables.

Figure 3. Effects of Institutional Factors Conditional on Education

Note: Figure displays 95% confidence intervals. CPI = Corruption Perception Index.

Estimates presented in Figure 3 lend support to Hypothesis 3a, which predicted that institutional quality will increase judicial trust among the better educated. Respondent education has a positive and statistically significant effect on the relationship between institutional quality and judicial trust. Though there is a clear monotonic relationship between education level and the effect of institutions, any effect of institutions is consistently identified only among university-educated respondents. Indeed, only the university educated are less trusting of the judiciary in countries with greater society-wide corruption, and are more trusting of it where there is a greater degree of rule of law overall, the judiciary is more accessible, and the law is applied more transparently.

In Online Appendix Tables A11, A13 and A14, we replicate these interactive models substituting alternative rule of law and corruption measures, and by disaggregating V-Dem's rule of law measure into its sub-indices. Results indicate robust and consistent estimates across specifications: with nearly all measures, better-educated respondents are more likely to trust the judiciary where judicial institutional quality and the rule of law are high, and are less likely to trust the judiciary where corruption is worse. The exceptions are found in the rule of law sub-indices. The estimated effects of only two out of thirteen sub-indices do not vary significantly with education, judicial review and efforts to undermine the judiciary with judicial reform. All measures of corruption and alternative rule of law measures, by contrast, significantly increase the judicial trust of the university educated.

To assess Hypothesis 3b more substantively, we plot in Figure 4 the estimated marginal effect of university education (relative to less than primary education) on judicial trust at various levels of institutional quality.Footnote ¹¹ As predicted, the effect of education is conditional on institutional quality. Indeed, institutional quality does not simply attenuate the size of education's effects on judicial trust, but is estimated to change the direction of this effect. Where institutional quality is high, the highly educated are more trusting; where it is low, they are less trusting. The estimated effects of between plus or minus 0.1 and 0.2 points translate to 3% and 6% of the full scale, respectively. The extended analyses in Online Appendix, Tables A13, A15 and A16 indicate similar patterns regardless of the particular institutional feature analysed. In sum, our findings strongly support Hypotheses 3a and 3b from the corruption literature: education and institutional factors interact to shape citizens' perceptions and evaluations of the judiciary.

Figure 4. Average Partial Effect of University Education by Institutional Quality

Note: Figure displays 95% confidence intervals. CPI = Corruption Perception Index.