Voice is not enough - The importance of influence in political trust and policy assessments

Procedural justice researchers have long argued that giving people a voice in decision-making proceedings leads to heightened satisfaction with the outputs of those processes and enhanced compliance with decisions. More recently, this concept has been applied to the political arena with the suggestion that simply having a voice in the proceedings may not be enough. Similarly, the attitudes of external efficacy and political trust have long been linked. Integrating these two lines of research to incorporate important lessons about the dimensionality of external efficacy, I argue that giving people a voice in politics is not a universal remedy for ailing democracy. A voice that is perceived to have no influence can be more detrimental than not perceiving a voice at all. Moving out of the experimental setting by using survey data collected in a 2001 study of attitudes toward municipal government, I examine the impact that perceptions of voice and influence have on feelings of policy satisfaction and political trust. Findings suggest that perceptions of voice and influence do indeed have an impact on feelings of political trust and policy satisfaction. Neither political trust nor policy satisfaction responds positively to perceptions of increased voice alone. Believing that citizen voice, loud or quiet, has an influence is important. Feelings of policy satisfaction and political trust are increased only when respondents believe citizens had both increased voice and influence.