The Impact of Human Values and Corruption on the Level of Trust in the Police Force in Europe

This article discusses the impact of individual values on the population’s trust in the police force. To illustrate the issue, the individual value-system will be used. As Schwartz’s value theory explains the value-system of different individuals, this theory shall compose on part of the theoretical basis for the argumentation.[1] The police is depend on the trust of the public in them to be able to fulfil their purpose. And to manage the complexity of world it is important that people trust in stable institutions. On the other side corruption in a system lead that the trust of people in institutions will be vanished.

The main concern is to find out how the mechanism is between human values, corruption and trust in the police. We hypotheses that if corruption is high trust in the police is smaller, while if the level of corruption is low the effects of the values are more important to explain trust in the police.

To answer these questions, we will compare different cantons within Switzerland and also European countries and conduct a secondary data analysis of different kinds of databases. The data from the European Social Survey 2014 allows us to analyse the value system and the trust in the police and use structural equation modelling as well as multilevel analyses.

[1] Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 25, pp. 1–65). San Diego: Academic Press.

Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are There Universal Aspects in the Structure and Contents of Human Values? Journal of Social Issues, 50(4), 19–45.