Public confidence and public services: it matters what you measure

Cowell, Richard John Westley ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1639-8004, Downe, James Daniel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0772-3183, Martin, Stephen James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1883-5837 and Chen, Alex 2012. Public confidence and public services: it matters what you measure. Policy & Politics 40 (1) , pp. 120-140. 10.1332/147084411X581862

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Abstract

Governments around the world are concerned about declining public confidence in democratic institutions. It has been widely assumed that improving the performance of public services will help address this problem. Policy makers in the United Kingdom (UK) have therefore been puzzled to discover that public confidence in local government continued to decline at a time when local services seemed to be improving. The reason for this apparent paradox is that public confidence is influenced by a wide array of factors only some of which are captured by official measures. Since different data can lead to quite different conclusions, it matters what is measured.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics) Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	public confidence; public services; performance measures
Publisher:	Policy Press
ISSN:	0305-5736
Last Modified:	18 Oct 2022 14:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/17582

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