Service Cynicism: How Civic Disengagement Develops

• Author: Shelley Liu,Tony Cheng
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329218755749
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329218755749

Politics & Society

2018, Vol. 46(1) 101 –129

© 2018 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329218755749

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Article

Service Cynicism: How Civic

Disengagement Develops

Tony Cheng

Yale University

New York University, School of Law

Shelley Liu

Harvard University

Abstract

How does civic disengagement develop? This article examines the theory that the

dissatisfaction and disengagement citizens develop toward one government agency

can extend to an alternative agency. Leveraging police precinct-level data on 311 calls

and criminal complaints from 2004 to 2012 in New York City, it investigates whether

government responsiveness to municipal issues predicts citizens’ willingness to submit

criminal complaints to the police. The study finds that predictors of disengagement

with law enforcement extend beyond negative interactions with law enforcement

alone. Rather, the time it takes local government officials to fix a 311 request for

services, such as filling potholes and abating noise, shapes the likelihood that residents

will file misdemeanor criminal complaints. Thus policymakers must account for the

policy environment beyond their agency’s domain to alleviate citizens’ dissatisfaction

and disengagement with government overall.

Keywords

civic engagement, participation, bureaucratic governance, service provision, law

enforcement

Corresponding Author:

Tony Cheng, Department of Sociology, Yale University, PO Box 208265, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.

Email: tony.cheng@yale.edu

755749PASXXX10.1177/0032329218755749Politics & SocietyCheng and Liu

research-article2018

102 Politics & Society 46(1)

The basic insight of civic engagement—that government effectiveness requires both

horizontal trust (citizen to citizen) and vertical trust (citizen to government)—is a funda-

mental principle of democratic governance.1 For policymakers, cultivating vertical trust

through repeated successful engagement and positive reciprocal interactions with their

constituents is a primary concern: the government’s execution of anticipated commit-

ments stimulates citizens’ positive disposition toward it and induces greater future reli-

ance. Trust in government wavers, depending in part on citizens’ evaluations of

government effectiveness, and in theory government responsiveness should encourage

positive engagement. However, government is not a singular entity, but instead com-

prises somewhat independent bureaucratic arms with varyingly levels of success in

invoking citizen participation. Thus, a key question emerges about the nature of citizen

engagement across different government bureaucracies: Does the dissatisfaction and

disengagement citizens develop toward one agency extend to another, different agency?

This question is particularly salient in sectors of government that directly distribute

goods and services for public consumption. Behind every policy decision, the question

of how to facilitate the delivery of goods and services looms large. By socially con-

structing and differentially rewarding distinct target populations, policies stratify soci-

ety by material goods, political incentives, and perceptions of political efficacy.2

Wrong decisions about how to deliver services or the metrics employed to define

effectiveness can engender a “confidence gap”3 and breed cynical citizens who believe

government is using their authority against them, that they are being misunderstood or

ignored by government, and that government is ineffective.4

This article argues that citizens evaluate government performance as a whole, and

that their satisfaction with one agency informs their views of, and engagement with,

other parts of government. As local governments move toward participatory govern-

ment practices that rely on citizens co-producing services,5 the public’s willingness to

volunteer information and participation becomes even more central.6 However, a citi-

zen’s willingness to initiate contact with a particular agency is not motivated exclu-

sively by past experiences with that agency, or solely by desires to improve community

conditions and enforce social norms.7 Instead, we posit that citizens possess a holistic

view of government, and that interactions with one agency, whether positive or nega-

tive, form the basis of the citizen’s willingness to interact with another agency, even in

a distinct policy domain.

We test our argument by looking at two avenues of citizen-initiated services—the

311 hotline for public services and criminal complaints to police—as a case study of

our theory. We ask: Does government responsiveness to nonemergency, municipal

requests for services predict criminal complaints to the police? We choose this pairing

because although these two spheres of government and citizen interaction converge in

the mechanism for contact, they dramatically diverge in their circumstances. In other

words, both policing and municipal service requests require citizen initiation, but

whereas 311 calls seek government assistance for mundane services, police complaints

alert government to criminal conduct during emergencies. The latter also has particu-

larly strong policy relevance, because citizens’ compliance with law enforcement is

necessary for public safety and effective governance.