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The coronavirus pandemic increased the role played by scientific advisers in counselling governments and citizens on issues around public health. This raises questions about how citizens evaluate scientists, and in particular the grounds on which they trust them. Previous studies have identified various factors associated with trust in scientists, although few have systematically explored a range of judgements and their relative effects. This study takes advantage of scientific advisers' heightened public profile during the pandemic to explore how people's trust in scientists is shaped by perceptions of their features and traits, along with evaluations of their behaviour and role within the decision-making process. The study also considers people's trust in politicians, thereby enabling us to identify whether trust in scientists reflects similar or distinctive considerations to trust in partisan actors. Data are derived from specially designed conjoint experiments and surveys of nationally representative samples in Britain and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Political Trust?" by Ben Seyd explores the decline in trust in British politics, with data showing that trust in government has reached its lowest level ever recorded. Factors contributing to this decline include negative assessments of government policy performance and feelings of policy representation. While declining trust may lead to support for populist parties, the impact on civic behaviors and democratic norms appears to be modest, suggesting that efforts to address the disconnect among socially and economically marginalized citizens may be more beneficial than focusing solely on boosting trust levels. [Extracted from the article]

Democratic legitimacy is sometimes measured by comparing what individuals expect of democracy with their evaluations of democratic performance. However, such composite measures hinder our understanding of whether any factors found to shape legitimacy do so through effects on expectations, through effects on evaluations or through effects on both. This article considers people's democratic expectations and evaluations separately. By modelling each – along with their combination in a measure of legitimacy – it identifies the factors that shape each outcome, and in particular whether any effects on legitimacy run through what people expect of democracy or through their evaluations of democratic performance. Models are run for four different dimensions of democracy to test whether the factors shaping people's attitudes vary between different aspects of the democratic system. The analysis is conducted using Wave 6 of the European Social Survey (2012-13) on populations across 16 west European countries. Analysis of individual country populations also enables us to identify whether the causes and mechanisms of democratic legitimacy vary between different national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00705.x Byline: John Curtice (1), Ben Seyd (2), Katarina Thomson (3) Abstract: The introduction of directly elected mayors potentially represents a major reform of the operation of local government in Britain. Drawing upon survey data collected at the time of the first two London mayoral elections, this article considers whether such elections necessarily deliver the advantages claimed for them by their advocates. It addresses three questions: (1) What was the basis of public support for the new institutions; (2) who participated in the London elections, and why; and (3) what accounts for voting behaviour in the London elections? In particular we examine how far the election of a single-person executive helps provide people with a clear choice, encourages citizens to vote on the qualities of individual candidates rather than on their party affiliation, and motivates people to vote on distinctively local issues as opposed to national ones. Our results suggest that while mayoral elections deliver some of the advantages claimed for them, they may be less successful on others. The extent to which directly elected mayors enhance the local electoral process is thus doubtful. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Strathclyde (2)University of Kent (3)National Centre for Social Research Article History: (Accepted: 13 March 2007)

Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may 'crowd out' the role of trust. We hypothesize that, at the pandemic's outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses constitutional changes in the British government in 2001. Issues include devolution, the dismemberment of the House of Lords, regional governance and the enforcement of the Human Rights Act.

Issues discussed concern the Labour government and constitutional politics in the United Kingdom in the years 1998-99. Topics addressed include the reform of the House of Lords, devolution and decentralization in government, the Human Rights Act of 1998, and electoral reform.

The procedural qualities of decisions made by public agencies are known to shape citizens' perceptions of decision legitimacy. Existing empirical studies focus on procedures such as whether citizens are consulted, and whether their preferences are taken into account. Less is known about whether decisions made by public agencies are deemed legitimate if they reflect citizens' broad interests rather than their immediate preferences. Yet, many contemporary issues confront policy-makers with dilemmas of whether to respond to citizens' demands or instead to act on their interests. Using an experimental approach among a sample of British citizens, we analyse the effects on perceived legitimacy of various aspects of decision responsiveness. We focus in particular on whether public agencies are rewarded if they ignore citizens' preferences while showing they are acting in their broader interests. Our results show that perceived legitimacy is indeed higher when decisions are seen to reflect citizens' collective interests. But this boost disappears if individuals disapprove of the agency's decision. We conclude that acting in citizens' broad interests is unlikely to stimulate legitimacy among individuals who do not favour a decision's outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The different constitutions like The Electoral Commission, The Joint Commission of Human Rights, and many others were called to adjudicate the legality of the Scottish Parliament Act. The Dynamic process was adopted as the devolved administrations began to shape their own Distinctive Policies.

In Britain, levels of political trust have declined, stimulating policy makers to explore ways of appealing to discontented citizens. One such initiative involves reform of the political system. Yet, this raises the question of which types of political reform are likely to appeal to discontented citizens. Existing studies have examined how individuals respond to political reforms, yet these studies only consider a limited range of institutional changes. Scholars and policy makers thus know little about the popular appeal of a wider set of institutional reforms. Taking advantage of proposals for political reform in Britain, this article considers public reactions to a wide range of institutional changes. Using data from the 2011 British Social Attitudes survey, we find that direct democratic reforms are not the only changes that appeal to discontented citizens. Instead, policy makers may also appeal to the distrustful via reforms that allow voters more control over their political representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disappointment is often identified as a pathology of modern politics; citizens expect Much of politicians, yet governments are ill-equipped to deliveroutcomes commensurate with those expectations. The net result is said to be a widespread disappointment; a negative balance between what citizens expect of government and what they perceive governments to deliver. Yet little attention has hitherto been paid to which kinds of citizens are particularly disappointed with politics, and why. This article offers one of the first empirical analyses of political disappointment. Drawing on a survey conducted in Britain, it provides a quantitative measure of political disappointment and explores its prevalence among citizens. It then considers which social groups might be more prone to disappointment than others. In particular, it explores whether certain groups are more disappointed by virtue of holding very high expectations of government or very low perceptions of government performance. The article concludes by considering what strategies might be open to policy makers to alleviate political disappointment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how citizens judge the trustworthiness of public officials, focusing on one aspect of the cognitive process through which trust is assessed. It considers how far trust reflects not only the perceptions of how politicians behave but also prior expectations of that behaviour. 'Expectancy disconfirmation' models suggest that attitudes to public services are largely shaped by performance perceptions adjusted for expectations. Drawing on survey data from a sample of citizens in the UK, the results of this study are inconsistent with this model. Instead, trust is found primarily to reflect performance perceptions alone; expectations play little additional role in shaping citizen evaluations. This suggests that policy makers are unlikely to boost levels of political trust by reducing what citizens expect of politicians. Instead, policy makers concerned to improve their public image will have to undertake the harder task of improving their performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British citizens are becoming increasingly discontented with politics and politicians. What explains this discontent, and what steps might policy-makers take to attract disaffected citizens? Ben Seyd looks at what recent research tells us about Britain's civic culture today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, the British state has been profoundly restructured. These changes challenge scholars to develop accounts capable of providing a unified analysis of the various reforms and of enabling their effects to be identified. While there is now a large literature on constitutional change in Britain, most of these studies focus on individual institutions and neglect the reforms' collective nature and effects. To develop a more unified analysis of the reforms and their consequences, we need an account of what institutions are and of how they work. Economic analyses of institutions provide such an account, helping us to identify the common operating logics that underpin different institutions along with their effects. Insights from the economic approach to institutions are drawn on to explore how the constitutional reforms in Britain affect the distribution of decision-making authority and the nature of political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ben Seyd argues that experience with referendums in the United Kingdom, starting with Northern Ireland's ‘border’ poll of 1973, shows the need for some basic ground rules. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Under the European Elections Bill securing a high place on a party's list will determine whether a candidate has any chance of being elected or not to the European Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wolfgang C. Müller and Kaare Strøm (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xiv+601pp., £55.00 hbk, ISBN 0 19 829760 2 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]