Governing Amid Diversity

Abstract

The influence of procedural justice on legitimacy is contrasted with the effects of self-interested judgments indexing agreement with congressional decisions. A further exploration seeking to find an influence of ethnicity, gender, education, age, income and/or ideology on the psychology of legitimacy suggests that demographic differences do not influence the criteria respondents use to assess the fairness of decisionmaking procedures. Several types of judgments about the actions of authorities potentially underlie public judgments about their legitimacy, including agreement with policies and decisions and judgments about the fairness of decisionmaking procedures. The primary purpose of the research is to test empirically the effectiveness of public beliefs about the justice of government in enhancing the legitimacy of government. The concern is with the effects of procedural qualities on procedural justice evaluations and on the legitimacy of the authorities involved. In the analysis two aspects of legitimacy are considered as dependent variables: attitudinal support and feelings of obligation to obey.