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 (t 0 and t 1). The sample was self-selected but diverse (a smaller subsample, n = 1,464, was pre-stratified to be representative of the Swedish population on key demographics). We find support for the view that the corona crisis led to higher levels of institutional and interpersonal trust. Moreover, reactions were largely homogeneous across those groups that could potentially relate distantly to government authorities.

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 parts of procedural fairness theory are true, outcome favorability is still overwhelmingly the strongest determinant of individuals' willingness to accept authoritative decisions. It improves on previous research by locating all key variables into one causal model and testing this model using appropriate data. Findings from a large number of experiments (both vignette and field) reproduce the expected relationships from previous research and support the additional predictions.

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 reforms are rather unpredictable phenomena. Second, we test the effect of transparency on procedure acceptance using vignette experiments of representative decision making in schools. We find that transparency can indeed generate legitimacy. Interestingly, however, the form need not be "fishbowl transparency," with full openness of the decision-making process. Decision makers may improve their legitimacy simply by justifying carefully afterward the decisions taken behind closed doors. Only when behavior close to a deliberative democratic ideal was displayed did openness of the process generate more legitimacy than closed-door decision making with postdecisional justifications.

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 results hold up in a real-world setting. We find that responsiveness actions are rewarded provided that citizens are convinced that politicians have paid attention to their wishes and views. Responsiveness actions that signal willingness to communicate ("to listen" and "to explain") are more effective than the action to follow majority opinion ("to adapt"). However, the responsiveness-acceptance connection is sensitive to perceptual bias; policy losers are hard pressed to accept that politicians have indeed acted responsively. Keywords research-article2016 740 Comparative Political Studies 50(6)Politicians frequently make policy decisions that are unwelcome to some citizens. Examples of this kind are decisions to raise income tax, to cut back on unemployment compensation, and to regulate Internet use. An unwanted consequence of such decisions is that citizens who have their preferences denied are forced to live by rules that they do not approve of (Przeworski, 2010). Because democratic states seek to minimize coercion, it is preferable that disappointed citizens are motivated to voluntarily accept the new policies (Levi, 1997). 1 When searching for ways to facilitate decision acceptance, democratic theory directs attention to procedural factors. The argument is that citizens have reason to accept decisions they dislike if they are made through fair procedural arrangements (e.g., Dahl, 1989). In the context of policy decisions, a central procedural requirement is that politicians are responsive to citizens' wishes and views (Dahl, 1971;Pitkin, 1967). Responsiveness, thus, is regarded as a means to counteract the unwanted consequences of controversial policy decisions: If politicians act responsively during the decisionmaking process, they will be rewarded not only by policy winners but also by policy losers who, while disappointed with the outcome of the decision, will appreciate the fairness of the process.However, the procedural solution is demanding on policy losers. It works only if disappointed citizens agree with politicians about the meaning of acting responsively and if procedural considerations can indeed compensate for the burden of living under rules that one disagree with. Acknowledging that we are dealing with a complex problem in democracy, this article sets out to improve on our common understanding of the responsiveness-acceptance connection.In the most general sense, politicians act responsively by paying attention to citizens' wishes and demands (Korolev, 2015;Soroka & Wlezien, 2010). An obvious way for politicians to demonstrate attentivene...

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 across classes. Within this setting, empirical support for three ideas about legitimacy enhancing decision‐making arrangements is tested: participatory constitution‐making; personal involvement in the decision‐making process; and fairness in the implementation of arrangements. Throughout the analyses it was found that personal involvement is the main factor generating legitimacy beliefs.