Immigration and trust in politics in Britain

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 163-185

  McLaren, Lauren ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 82655189209     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123411000251     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. David Easton, 'An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems', World Politics, 9(1957), 383-400;
2. Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
3. Note that Will Jennings' recent analysis ('The Public Thermostat, Political Responsiveness and Error-Correction: Border Control and Asylum in Britain, 1994-2007', British Journal of Political Science, 39(2009), 847-70) indicates that changes in the administration of the asylum system are likely to be a direct result of shifts in public opinion regarding immigration, thus pointing to clear policy implications of concern about immigration in Britain.
4. John T. Scholz and Mark Lubell, 'Trust and Taxpaying: Testing the Heuristic Approach to Collective Action', American Journal of Political Science, 42(1998), 398-417;
5. Sofie Marien and Marc Hooghe, 'Does Political Trust Matter? An Empirical Investigation into the Relation between Political Trust and Support for Law Compliance', European Journal of Political Research, 50(2011), 267-91;
6. Natalia Letki, 'Investigating the Roots of Civic Morality: Trust, Social Capital, and Institutional Performance', Political Behavior, 28(2006), 305-25. (Pubitemid 44771122)
7. Margaret Levi, 'A State of Trust', in Margaret Levi and Valerie Braithwaite, eds, Trust and Governance (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), pp. 77-101, at p. 80.
8. Geoffrey Brennan, 'Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View', in Margaret Levi and Valerie Braithwaite, eds, Trust and Governance, pp. 197-217;
9. Philip Pettit, 'Republican Theory and Political Trust', in Margaret Levi and Valerie Braithwaite, eds, Trust and Governance, pp. 295-314.
10. Arthur H. Miller and Ola Listhaug, 'Political Parties and Confidence in Government: A Comparison of Norway, Sweden and the United States', British Journal of Political Science, 29(1990), 357-86, p. 358.
11. Easton, 'An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems', p. 391;
12. see also Dankwart A. Rustow, 'Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model', Comparative Politics, 2(1970), 337-63; David Miller also argues for the desirability of national identity in helping to create a more just society
13. (see David Miller, 'Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Theoretical Reflections', in Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds, Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)).
14. David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (NewYork: Wiley, 1965).
15. This very question, of course, sparked a debate in the 1970s over how to interpret increasing levels of expressions of distrust in politics in the United States (Arthur Miller, 'Political Issues and Trust in Government', American Political Science Review, 68(1974), 951-72;
16. Jack Citrin, 'Comment', American Political Science Review, 68(1974), 973-88;
17. Arthur Miller, 'Rejoinder', American Political Science Review, 68(1974), 989-1001).
18. Russell Dalton, Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 58-60;
19. Hans-Dieter Klingemann, 'Mapping Political Support in the 1990s', in Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 31-56.
20. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Books, 1991).
21. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983);
22. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
23. Pierre van den Berghe, 'Race and Ethnicity: A Sociobiological Perspective', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1(1978), 401-11.
24. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), p. 61.
25. On the development of English and British identity, see Smith, National Identity;
26. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993);
27. and Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, 2nd edn (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).
28. See Stephen Schulman, 'Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of Nationalism', Comparative Political Studies, 35(2002), 554-85.
29. Henri Tajfel, 'Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination', Scientific American, 223(1970), 96-102;
30. John C. Turner, 'Towards a Cognitive Redefinition of the Social Group', in Henri Tajfel, ed., Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 15-40;
31. John C. Turner, 'Social Categorization and the Self-Concept: A Social Cognitive Theory of Group Behavior', Advances in Group Processes, 2(1985), 77-122.
32. Lincoln Quillian, 'Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat: Population Composition and Anti-Immigrant and Racial Prejudice in Europe', American Sociological Review, 60(1995), 586-611;
33. Paul M. Sniderman, Louk Hagendoorn and Markus Prior, 'Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers: Exclusionary Reactions to Immigrant Minorities', American Political Science Review, 98(2004), 35-49; (Pubitemid 38411326)
34. Joel S. Fetzer, Public Attitudes toward Immigration in the United States, France, and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
35. It must be noted that, even in the United States, there tend to be perceived limitations regarding who are acceptable migrants, as the modern debates about migration from Mexico have indicated (and previous debates about migrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland and many other countries indicate - see Rita J. Simon, 'Old Minorities, New Immigrants: Aspirations, Hopes, and Fears', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530(1993), 61-73).
36. Easton, 'An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems', p. 391;
37. see also Rustow, 'Transitions to Democracy';
38. and Miller, 'Multiculturalism and the Welfare State'.
39. Christopher J. Anderson and Aida Paskeviciute, 'How Ethnic and Linguistic Heterogeneity Influence the Prospects for Civil Society: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Behavior', Journal of Politics, 68(2006), 783-802; (Pubitemid 44536256)
40. Alberto F. Alesina, and Eliana La Ferrara, 'Participation in Heterogeneous Communities', Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(2000), 847-904;
41. Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, 'Civic Engagement in Heterogeneous Communities', Perspectives on Politics, 1(2003), 103-12;
42. Dietlind Stolle, Stuart Soroka and Richard Johnston, 'When Does Diversity Erode Trust? Neighborhood Diversity, Interpersonal Trust and the Mediating Effect of Social Interactions', Political Studies, 56(2008), 57-75;
43. Natalia Letki, 'Does Diversity Erode Social Cohesion? Social Capital and Race in British Neighbourhoods', Political Studies, 56(2008), 99-126;
44. Marc Hooghe, Tim Reeskens, Dietlind Stolle and Ann Trappers, 'Ethnic Diversity and Generalized Trust: A Cross-National Multilevel Study', Comparative Political Studies, 42(2009), 198-223;
45. Patrick Sturgis, Ian Brunton-Smith, Sanna Read and Nick Allum, 'Does Ethnic Diversity Erode Trust?: Putnam's 'Hunkering-Down' Thesis Reconsidered', British Journal of Political Science, 41(2011), 57-82.
46. Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Anti-Poverty Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999);
47. James Habyarimana, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel N. Posner and Jeremy M Weinstein, 'Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision?' American Political Science Review, 101(2007), 709-25.
48. Smith, National Identity, p. 12.
49. In some contexts, it might also be appropriate to try to incorporate indicators of numbers of immigrants; however, in the British case we assume that perceptions about immigration are generally determined more by national-level phenomena such as overall (national) levels of migration to Britain and national media presentation of immigration and immigrants. Thus, while certain areas of Britain have been affected more by immigration (see, for instance, Julie Smith, 'Towards Consensus? Centre-Right Parties and Immigration Policy in the UK and Ireland', in Tim Bale, ed., Immigration and Integration Policy in Europe: Why Politics-and the Centre-Right - Matter (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 101-17, at p. 108), detecting local differences in the relationship between concern about immigration and political trust is likely to be difficult. In addition, we are not able to incorporate information about contact with immigrants, which has a powerful mediating effect on perceptions of immigrants and immigration
50. (see, for instance, Thomas Pettigrew, 'Intergroup Contact Theory', Annual Review of Psychology, 49(1998), 65-85). Moreover, exploratory analyses of the 2005 BES dataset indicates that local levels of migration, ethnic composition and percentage of the population that is Muslim are very weakly related to perceptions of migration. Analyses of other attitudinal data in Britain also indicate that these often fail to be connected to objective indicators
51. th Report (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 76-97, at p. 88). This phenomenon of misperception is not, of course, limited to Britain, particularly in the case of estimating numbers of immigrants
52. (John Sides and Jack Citrin, 'European Opinion about Immigration: The Role of Identities, Interests and Information, ' British Journal of Political Science, 37(2007), 477-504).
53. David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (London: Macmillan, 1969), p. 303.
54. Eurobarometer 47.1, Images of Switzerland, Education throughout life, Racism, and Patterns of Family Planning and Work Status, March-April 1997.
55. Lauren McLaren and Mark Johnson, 'The Rising Tide of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in Britain', in Alison Park et al., eds, British Social Attitudes 21st Report (London: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 172;
56. Alison Park et al., eds, British Social Attitudes 26th Report (London: Sage Publications, 2010).
57. http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx? oItemId=53&view=wide, consulted 4 June 2011.
58. See Transatlantic Trends: Immigration Key Findings 2009 and Transatlantic Trends: Immigration Topline Data 2008 at http://trends.gmfus.org/, or accessed 4 June 2011.
59. Schulman, 'Challenging the Civic/Ethnic and West/East Dichotomies in the Study of Nationalism', pp. 566, 569, 570, 576, 577.
60. Lauren McLaren and Mark Johnson, 'Resources, Group Conflict, and Symbols: Explaining Anti-Immigration Hostility in Britain', Political Studies, 55(2007), 709-32;
61. Clive D. Field, 'Islamophobia in Contemporary Britain: The Evidence of the Opinion Polls, 1988-2006', Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 18(2007), 447-77.
62. Randall Hansen, Citizenship an Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
63. Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany and Great Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Although the Labour Party in the 1997-2005 period appeared to be far more favourable to increased immigration, the fall-out from the unexpectedly large-scale migration from Central and Eastern Europe after the 2004 enlargement of the European Union seems to have propelled the creation of more restrictive immigration legislation, using a point-based system to discourage low-skilled migration to Britain
64. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk-politics/7269790.stm, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk-politics/7904393.stm, or http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/uk-politics/7951721.stm, all accessed 4 June 2011). At the time of the fieldwork for the surveys used in this analysis, it was not entirely clear that immigration policies of Conservative governments would be that different from those of the Labour government
65. (see, for instance, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk-politics/7677962.stm, accessed 4 June 2011), although the recent proposal to introduce caps on immigration is clearly more restrictive than Labour's general approach to the issue. In the 2010 election campaign, however, Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats all stated their desire for strong restrictions on immigration
66. (see Julie Smith 'Towards Consensus?' for an overview of party approaches to immigration in Britain prior to 2009).
67. For instance, in 2002, then Home Secretary Blunkett suggested that immigrants speak English in their own homes, advised Asians to stop making arranged marriages in their home countries and make them within the United Kingdom instead and compared Muslim forced marriages with practices of medieaval England (see The Times, 16 September 2002, p. 1g, 1 June 2002, p. 2e, and 15 January 2002, p. 8f).
68. On the cross-time positions of political parties on immigration and race, see Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State;
69. James Hampshire, Citizenship and Belonging: Immigration and the Politics of Demographic Governance in Postwar Britain (Houndsmills, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005);
70. Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); in the 2005 general election, Conservative leader Michael Howard appeared to attempt to distance himself and his party somewhat from this issue - despite incorporating it as an important part of the party's platform - by arguing that immigration was only one of its five important issues, and some moderates in the Conservative party were 'annoyed' at the prominence given to immigration by some of the Conservative candidates
71. (see Dennis Kavanagh and David Butler, The British General Election of 2005 (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 76;
72. Smith, 'Towards Consensus?'). On the cohesion of the parties on this issue, Whiteley et al.
73. (Paul Whiteley, Patrick Seyd and Jeremy John Richardson, True Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)) found that 91 per cent of the members of the Conservative party believed immigration controls should be tightened, compared to 70 per cent of Labour party members. In addition, although there was 'tough talk' on immigration by many of the Labour party's leaders as noted above and several prominent Labour party members, other Labour MPs believed highlighting such problems only gave succour to public racist sentiments and to the BNP. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
74. Andrew Geddes and Jonathan Tonge, Britain Decides: The UK General Election 2005 (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave, 2005);
75. Kavanagh and Butler, The British General Election of 2005;
76. Harold Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne Stewart and Paul Whiteley, 'Taking the Bloom off New Labour's Rose: Party Choice and Voter Turnout in Britain, 2005', Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 16(2006), 3-36.
77. Edward N. Muller, 'A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence', American Political Science Review, 66(1972), 928-59, p. 943;
78. Max Kaase, 'Interpersonal Trust, Political Trust and Non- Institutionalised Political Participation in Western Europe', West European Politics, 22(1999), 10-12;
79. Klingemann, 'Mapping Political Support in the 1990s', p. 37.
80. Harold D. Clarke, Nitish Dutt and Allan Kornberg, 'The Political Economy of Attitudes towards Polity and Society in Western European Democracies', Journal of Politics, 55(1993), 998-1021;
81. Christopher J. Anderson and Christine A. Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy: A Cross-National Analysis of Consensus and Majoritarian Systems', American Political Science Review, 91(1997), 66-81;
82. Brad Lockerbie, 'Economic Dissatisfaction and Political Alienation in Western Europe', British European Journal of Political Science, 23(1993), 281-93.
83. Miller and Listhaug 'Political Parties and Confidence in Government';
84. Arthur H. Miller and Ola Listhaug, 'Political Performance and Institutional Trust', in Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 204-16;
85. Kenneth Newton, 'Political Support: Social Capital, Civil Society and Political and Economic Performance', Political Studies, 54(2006), 846-64. (Pubitemid 44826096)
86. John Brehm and Wendy Rahn, 'Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital', American Journal of Political Science, 41(1997), 999-1023;
87. Sonja Zmerli and Ken Newton, 'Social Trust and Attitudes Toward Democracy', Public Opinion Quarterly, 72(2008), 706-24.
88. Anderson and Guillory 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy';
89. Christopher J. Anderson and Andrew J. LoTempio, 'Winning, Losing and Political Trust in America', British Journal of Political Science, 32(2002), 335-51.
90. Interviews were conducted face-to-face in England, Wales and Scotland; see Mark Johnson, Katarina Thomson and Shaun Scholes, British Election Study 2005 Technical Report March 2007, available at http://www.essex.ac.uk/bes/, accessed 4 June 2011; note that the pre-election British weight has been applied (see pp. 20-2 of the report).
91. We are limited to these two items by question availability in the 2005 BES; however, the two items do capture the main threats thought to be posed by immigration, namely cultural and economic threat (e.g., Sniderman, Hagendoorn and Prior, 'Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers').
92. Anderson and Guillory, 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy';
93. Anderson and LoTempio, 'Winning, Losing and Political Trust in America';
94. Anderson and Paskeviciute. 'How Ethnic and Linguistic Heterogeneity Influence the Prospects for Civil Society';
95. Robert Rohrschneider, 'Institutional Quality and Perceptions of Representation in Advanced Industrial Democracies', Comparative Political Studies, 38(2005), 850-74. Job category had very little effect and has been omitted from the analysis. Also, note that ethnic minorities have been removed from all of the analyses, including those in Table 1. (Pubitemid 41304841)
96. This method of displaying interactive effects is discussed in Thomas Brambor, William Roberts Clark and Matt Golder, 'Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses', Political Analysis, 14(2006), 63-82; (Pubitemid 43118795)
97. see also http://homepages.nyu.edu/, mrg217/interaction.html# code, last accessed 4 June 2011.
98. Matthew Gabel and Kenneth Scheve, 'Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications on Public Opinion Using Instrumental Variables', American Journal of Political Science, 51(2007), 1013-28, p. 1020.
99. For a review of the findings related to the contact hypothesis, see Jared B. Kenworthy, Rhiannon N. Turner, Miles Hewstone and Alberto Voci, 'Intergroup Contact: When Does it Work, and Why?', in John F. Dovidio, Peter Samuel Glick and Laurie A. Rudman, eds, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years after Allport (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 278-92.
100. Gabel and Scheve, 'Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications', pp. 1021-2. Although significant, the correlation between the instruments and concern about immigration is somewhat weak, which may bias the instrumental variables estimates towards the corresponding OLS estimates. Concern about the strength of the instruments for perceptions of immigration may be mitigated by examining the reduced form regression of political trust on the instruments and the exogenous variables. These estimates are proportional to the coefficient of interest and are unbiased even if the instruments are weak and so indicate the sign of the coefficient of interest. The results of this regression show negative and statistically significant coefficients for the instruments 'No immigrant friends'; and 'Qualification for immigration: committed to way of life in country', and 'Qualification for immigration: committed to way of life in country', with the signs in the correct direction. These results indicate that the coefficient for concern about immigration is negative as we report in the instrumental variable results below
101. (see Gabel and Scheve, 'Estimating the Effect of Elite Communications', p. 1022, fn. 16 for a similar approach to the problem of weak instruments).
102. Sniderman, Hagendoorn and Prior. 'Predisposing Factors and Situational Triggers';
103. Quillian, 'Prejudice as a Response to Perceived Group Threat';
104. McLaren and Johnson, 'Resources, Group Conflict, and Symbols'.