ABSTRACT
The ‘legitimacy crisis’ of the state, legal institutions, and in particular in the criminal justice system, has become a much-observed phenomenon that is said to be plaguing several European democracies. Trust in advanced industrial democracies has similarly been reported to be in decline since the 1960s (Putnam 1995, Dalton 2005), with recent declines aggravated by the effects of the global financial crisis. The connection between the two notions is not accidental: when people lose trust in the state, government, legal institutions or the rule of law, they tend to perceive the last as less legitimate.
