Abstract
In this chapter, the authors address the question of why public officials and practitioners in civil-protection agencies support or oppose cooperation within the framework of the EU. They do so by investigating whether differences in social trust and public-administration culture are associated with varying levels of confidence in national and EU-level civil-protection institutions. The results show that, in countries where officials trust their own national institutions to a high degree, said officials also tend to trust EU-coordinated civil protection. By contrast, in places where officials trust their own national institutions to a lesser degree, officials are also less likely to trust EU-coordinated efforts in civil protection. In addition, institutional trust derives from evaluations based on the administrative culture of institutions. The more officials see EU-level institutions as allowing for professional judgement and autonomy, the more highly they tend to regard them.
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- 1.
The reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) is 0.618 for the three items measuring administrative culture at EU level, which suggests that the items are associated. The corresponding items for measuring administrative culture at national level have a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.594. We have therefore decided to treat these variables separately, instead of creating an index. Theoretically, they also refer to different aspects of administrative culture.
- 2.
See the online appendix http://persona.statsvet.uu.se/sv-se/Appendices, Table A5.1.
- 3.
The following items in the survey are used for measuring the administrative culture of national institutions: Autonomy: ‘Generally speaking, would you say that public-sector employees in the crisis-management and/or civil-protection institution where you work have much leeway/autonomy in their working situation? 0 (not at all) to 6 (to a very large extent)’; Transparency: ‘Would you say that the activities and decisions of the crisis-management and/or civil-protection institution where you work are open to scrutiny by the public? 0 (not at all) to 6 (to a very large extent)’; Professionalism: ‘To what extent would you say that public-sector employees in the crisis-management and/or civil-protection institution where you work are allowed to use their own professional judgment in their working situation? 0 (not at all) to 6 (to a very large extent).’
- 4.
A bivariate correlation between the measures of trust in officials working in EU-level civil-protection institutions and trust in those institutions indicates that the two variables are closely related (Pearson’s r is 0.819). However, there is no evidence of multicollinearity in our models. We calculated the variance-inflation factors (VIF) for all analyses. In the final model, for instance, all VIF scores are below 2.8 (trust in national institutions), and in most cases below 1.5. The VIF score for trust in officials working in EU-level civil-protection institutions is 2.0. This leads us to believe we do not have a problem with multicollinearity.
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Widmalm, S., Parker, C.F., Persson, T. (2019). Trust in the EU as a Leading Force in Civil Protection. In: Civil Protection Cooperation in the European Union. European Administrative Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02858-9_5
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