Legitimidad y percepciones generales de justicia de las autoridades legales de Córdoba (Argentina): un abordaje desde las valoraciones de justicia procedimental

Abstract

La justicia es uno de los principios básicos que se aplica a individuos e instituciones, siendo un facilitador social que posibilita la interacción entre personas y grupos (Tyler, 2000). Por esta razón, se ha convertido en un tema de gran interés para la investigación en Psicología Social. Distintos autores han examinado el impacto de las experiencias en las percepciones de legitimidad de las autoridades (Baird, 2001; De Cremer & Tyler, 2007; Hinds, 2007), así como la influencia de estas valoraciones de legitimidad, en el comportamiento de obediencia de normas (Murphy, 2005; Tyler, 1990). En el estudio que se informa se examinaron las percepciones de legitimidad de autoridades legales de Córdoba (Argentina), por parte de los ciudadanos. Asimismo, se estudió el impacto de las valoraciones de justicia procedimental sobre las valoraciones de legitimidad y justicia de las autoridades. Finalmente, se controló la influencia de variables socio-demográficas y situacionales. Para ello, se tomó una muestra no probabilística, cuotificada por edad, género y nivel socio-económico, de 300 personas de la ciudad de Córdoba que hubieran tenido contacto reciente con alguna de las autoridades en estudio (Policía, Policía Caminera, juzgados e inspectores municipales). Los resultados mostraron que las valoraciones de las autoridades locales son, en general, negativas. Además, las valoraciones de justicia procedimental realizaron un aporte significativo a la explicación de las valoraciones de legitimidad y justicia de las autoridades en general. Las variables de control no mostraron una influencia significativa.

Justice is a desirable principle in social inter - actions.At the same time, in the case of institutions, justice is a virtue that is manifested in its role of distributing goods and costs or rights and duties (distributive justice) and its corrective function to punish actions that violate social norms (jus - tice sanctioning) (Garzón, 2004). The role of justice as the main regulator of social relations has become a topic of great interest to Social Psychology. The majority of recent studies in this perspective of justice have investigated perceptions of procedural justice, this is, justice based on the process used by an au thor ity to make a decision. Most researchers found that procedural justice evaluations are an important predictor of the legitimacy of the author - ities. However, these studies have been conducted mainly in the United States, and in our local area there is no previous research centered in this perspective of justice. Although there are some previous studies that recognize the problem of legi - timacy in Latin America (Latinobarometro Corporation, 2010; Salles, 2010; Turner & Carballo, 2010), we have no knowledge of local research, conducted in the field of Social Psychology, that examines the origins of this lack of confidence in legal authorities. For this reason, the present study evaluates not only perceptions of legitimacy of legal authorities, but also their relationship with proce - dural justice values.According to that, we study the impact of citizens’ procedural justice perceptions of a particular experience with a legal authority on perceptions of legitimacy and fairness of the au - thorities in general. In addition, we control for the influence of various socio-demographic variables (gender, age, educational level and socioeconomic status) and status (presence of a conflict, the volun - tariness of the experience, the favorability of outcomes and the relevance of results and treat ment) on this relationship. We used a retrospective ex post facto design in a nonrandom sample of 300 citizens (54.7% male) from the city of Córdoba (Argen - tina). We interviewed only those who had a personal experience with at least one of the au thorities under study (police, traffic police, courts, and municipal inspectors) during the last year. Most of the situations involved contact with the police (52.9%) or traffic police (30.4%), whereas only 10% were with municipal inspectors, and the remaining 6.7% were situations related to court issues. Moreover, the vast majority of situations with the authorities involved a non-voluntary contact (71.7%) and only 9% included a dispute with another person. The descriptive results of the perceived legitimacy of the authorities were consis tent with previous research: Most people did not have a positive valuation of legal authorities, and courts were the institutions worst valued, while the traffic police were among the best valued. It was also found that procedural justice is a significant predictor of perceptions of legitimacy (r = 52) and General Valuation of Justice (r = 61) of the legal authorities. Regarding the control variables, we found that the sociodemographic and situational variables have no significant effect on these two dependent variables, when procedural justice is taken into account. These results are important because they expose the relevance of authorities’ performance during their contacts with citizens: those who believed that authorities had not acted in a fair way during their personal encounter, were more likely to assign less legitimacy to authorities in general. This results are relevant in Social Psy chology field, taking into account that previous research has emphasized the relevance of legiti macy and justice perceptions for the support of the authorities and their effectiveness, that is, the maintenance of the social order.