The Fairness of National Decision‐making Procedures: The Views of Adolescents in 18 European Countries

Abstract

This study examines adolescents' evaluation of the fairness of three forms of democratic decisionmaking procedures (direct democracy, representative democracy and group representation) and one non-democratic procedure (oligarchy). Social dominance orientation-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), religious group identification and the countries' level of democracy are examined as predictors. The 2008 Europroject dataset was used, which contained 4441 native majority adolescents (mean age = 16.1 years) in 18 European countries. Adolescents evaluated direct democracy as most fair, followed by group representation, representative democracy and oligarchy. This rank order was found independent of the issue under consideration (moral or social), and of SDO-E and religious identification, and across the countries. In addition, adolescents scoring higher on SDO-E and on religious identification found group representation and non-democratic oligarchy fairer.This study examines how native majority adolescents (12-21 years) evaluate the fairness of different forms of societal decision making and whether these evaluations depend on the issue under consideration and on concerns about group relations. The focus is on the perceived fairness of decision-making procedures for moral and social issues and in relation to individual differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and religious group identification. The perceived fairness of different forms of decision making is examined in 18 European countries and in relation to their level of democracy. Perceived fairness of national decision makingIn democratic forms of social organization, individuals have a say in decisions that affect them. These forms allow individuals to express their viewpoints themselves or through their elected representatives and to have an impact on the decisions that are made. Most societies have a system of regular elections through representative democracy or direct democracy (e.g. referenda) in which decisions are based on the majority of the entire population, whereas other countries have forms of ethno-cultural group representation. Thus, different forms of (non-)democratic procedures can be defined and in this study a distinction is made between four forms of decision making. The most extensive democratic form is a direct democracy (a referendum), and the non-democratic form is an oligarchy in which, for example, the elite or the culturally or religiously largest group makes the decisions. In between these two extremes are two forms of staged democracy in which people choose (group) representatives to make decisions.Young people acquire conceptions of the fairness of democratic and non-democratic procedures through experiences with, for example, decision making in their peer group and in schools (Print, Ornstrom, & Nielsen, 2002;Torney-Purta, 2002). In these situations, children and adolescents are likely to become familiar with procedures such as majority rule, and they develop an understanding of what is fair. In a number of studie...

Multiculturalism, Mauritian Style

“…Against this dynamic societal background of official group representation and color-blind citizenship, we investigated Hindu, Muslim, and Creole adolescents’ fairness evaluations of different decision-making procedures: three democratic decision-making procedures (representative democracy, equal group representation, proportional group representation) and one nondemocratic procedure (cultural group oligarchy; Ng Tseung-Wong & Verkuyten, 2013b). Similar to research among adolescents in Canada and China (Helwig, 1998, 2006; Helwig, Arnold, Tan, & Boyd, 2007) and across Europe (Ellenbroek, Verkuyten, Thijs, & Poppe, in press), we found that adolescents preferred democratic systems (representative democracy) to nondemocratic ones. More specifically, across the three ethnic groups, there was the same ranking: adolescents reported that representative democracy was the fairest decision-making procedure and cultural group oligarchy, the most unfair system.…”

The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO₇ scale.

“…SDO-E, on the other hand, was a stronger predictor of political conservatism and system legitimacy beliefs in the U.S., support for the unequal distribution of resources, opposition to policies that would bring about equality, and relatively subtle prejudice. Our findings thus provide a solid foundation for the emerging field of study on the theoretically important distinction between the SDO-D dimension, that reflects active and aggressive subordination of groups, and the SDO-E dimension, that reflects a more subtle opposition to equality (see also Ellenbroek et al, 2014;Hindriks et al, 2014;Jost & Thompson, 2000; NATURE OF SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION 29 Kteily et al, in press;Kugler et al, 2010;Larsson et al, 2012;Martinovic & Verkuyten, 2013;Swami et al, 2013).…”

The moment you decide, you divide: How politicians assess procedural fairness

“…We do not expect national context to have much relevance for perceptual accuracy as the 'good loser' norm is widely shared and as we are studying universal psychological mechanisms. In support of this, the procedural fairness literature finds that values of fair treatment are shared by people from different national contexts (e.g., Cohn et al 2000;Ellenbroek et al 2014;Price et al 2001).…”