The Social Side of Fair Process

1. Introduction

Millions of people interact with government every day. This might be to access healthcare, to apply for benefits, to seek support for special educational needs, to change their immigration status, to request an assessment for social care support, or for a range of other purposes. Many of these services require people to maintain contact with government bodies over time and often to be in contact with multiple such bodies at once. While this ‘frontline’ of government may often seem the routine or even banal end of administrative law when compared with matters that implicate clashing institutions and high politics, it is in this space where the legal rights and entitlements people have in relation to government are made real, and government contributes to social progress. It is also the place where administrative law can fail systemically, as a number of recent episodes have shown us.^[1]

In this context, the idea that—separate from the eventual outcome of any process—the manner in which people are treated in their interactions with government is a matter of fairness is central to modern administrative law thought. Administrative lawyers often use varying concepts and terminology to express this point—due process, procedural fairness, natural justice, procedural justice, and so on—but the influence of the basic idea cannot be disputed.^[2] This has been seen in many debates over the years, with perhaps K.C. Davis’s response to a critique that ‘[p]rocedure has been an obsessive concern of … administrative law’^[3] being amongst the most colourful expressions of its centrality:

This is like saying that the birth of babies has been an obsessive concern of obstetricians … Procedure is the essence of administrative law … The basic problem of administrative law is …. What procedures should the government use for getting the results it wants?^[4]

However, the idea of fair administrative process has multiple sides, some of which research has paid much more attention to than others.

Much focus has been placed on what we may call the ‘legal side’ of procedural fairness. That is, the exposition of legal standards pertaining to fair administrative process, particularly as articulated through the courts. There is a long history of common law to be found on what constitutes procedural fairness,^[5] which, in its contemporary form, includes such principles as the right to be heard, the duty to give reasons, and the principle against apparent bias. In recent decades, common law standards of procedural fairness have also come under the sway of, and have been supplemented by, new, general statutory schemes, such as the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998.

There has also been much thought dedicated to what we may call the ‘normative side’ of fair administrative process. Here, efforts have generally been directed towards addressing the question of the value of procedural fairness, usually to explain, analyse, and guide the development of legal and other standards through which we can evaluate administrative action. Broadly speaking, two lines of thought dominate contemporary thinking on the normative side. The first is an instrumental perspective.^[6] From this viewpoint, a fair administrative process is desirable as it is much more likely to produce higher-quality information for decision-makers. This richer information, achieved via a commitment to procedural fairness, creates the conditions where a better-informed decision-maker will likely make a better overall decision. The second perspective sees procedural fairness as an end in itself, and is typically related to respecting the dignity of those subject to the process.^[7] These two ways of thinking about procedural fairness are not mutually exclusive but differ in the emphasis that they place on the value of procedural fairness.

One of the most fruitful turns in twentieth-century research was an increased focus on, what might be loosely called, the ‘administrative design’ side of fair administrative process. This involves an attempt to understand the ways in which the realization of fair process in frontline bureaucracies—by any quantitative measure, the primary public site of the interpretation and enforcement of administrative law—turns heavily upon how public officials organize and operationalize administrative processes in practice. Thought on this ‘administrative design’ side of fair administrative process has, over several decades, led to the development of ‘models’ of what constitutes ‘administrative justice’, with the dominant theory being that each model competes for priority and is underpinned by its own set of legitimating values, goals, organizational structures, and cognitive techniques.^[8]

Administrative law researchers thus have a rich tapestry of intellectual traditions and theories upon which they can draw to understand the nature and operationalization of fair administrative processes. However, administrative law research has engaged much less—in fact, hardly at all—with what I will call the ‘social side’ of fair administrative process. This is the simple but neglected idea that individuals’ subjective experiences—fair or unfair—of administrative processes matter in the longer arc of time in terms of the formation of their attitudes and behaviours, and, in aggregate, this effect then shapes the outcomes of public action and even what the state might be capable of achieving.^[9] To be clear, the thesis being advanced here concerns subjective perceptions as, in terms of the social impacts of fair process, the subjective perceptions of individuals are more relevant than any objective assessment. To put this simply, what matters to social side effects is what people think of the way administrative processes treat them. There are potentially many other ways of expressing this link. For instance, the enquiry could similarly be framed as one about the ‘externalities’ or ‘spillover effects’ of fair administrative process or as an examination of the effects of fair administrative process on ‘state capacity’ or ‘pro-social behaviours.’ Whatever terms are used, this ‘social side’ of fair administrative process—which is the term I will adopt—is almost certainly highly consequential but far from fully understood.

My aim in this article is to open new space for thinking much more deeply about the social side of fair process in administrative law. I will, first, draw together currently disparate evidence from various disciplines and policy domains to demonstrate established links between perceived fair administrative process and substantive outcomes. Second, drawing on a wide range of empirical studies undertaken in the last two years at the Administrative Fairness Lab, I will point to three ways in which fully uncovering the social side of fair process requires administrative law researchers to expand how we conventionally conceptualize and analyse fair process. This, I will show, will complicate both settled understandings of this idea and also our task as researchers. However, it also offers a pathway to creating a new and more sophisticated understanding of this central idea of modern administrative law. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument.

2. Outcomes of Fair Process

It is not that administrative law researchers are completely unaware of the possible social side of fair process—it is often the case that researchers, particularly when complaining about failures or deficits of fair process in administration, allude to human, social, economic, and environmental consequences. The neglect appears to stem from not taking these social-side impacts seriously as part of what is being analysed—it is more commonly mentioned as a sort of collateral damage. However, other disciplines have sought to analyse these sorts of effects with rigour, including by assimilating empirical evidence and building increasingly sophisticated descriptive and explanatory theories. They have also sought to think more about the effects of when things go right than administrative lawyers—who are so often concerned with when things go wrong—have tended to do.

The principal domain in which this research has developed is frontline policing. In this field, the specific connection criminological research has established, expressed in its simplest form, is one between whether police officers treat people fairly in ‘street-level’ interactions, whether people trust public authority and see it as legitimate, and the general willingness of people to comply with the law.

There are now vast volumes of research exploring this link,^[10] but Tyler’s theory of procedural justice, and, in particular, his seminal book Why People Obey the Law, remains the touchstone.^[11] In that study, Tyler’s research involved a large-scale survey in Chicago, with over 1500 participants who had recent interactions with police or the court system. The survey sought to understand their attitudes toward legal authorities, the fairness of procedures they experienced, and their motivations for complying with the law. Participants were asked about their personal experiences with police officers and judges, whether they felt treated with dignity and respect, and if they believed the decisions were made impartially. A key finding was that frontline police officers play a crucial role in shaping public perceptions of the legal system. The way police treat individuals during encounters—whether fairly, respectfully, and without bias—profoundly influences people’s willingness to comply with the law. When individuals feel that police officers are fair, they view them as more legitimate authorities. This legitimacy, in turn, increases voluntary compliance with laws, as people obey not out of fear of punishment but because they trust the system and believe it is just. Tyler further found that procedural justice—the fairness of how decisions are made—was a more important predictor of compliance than the perceived risk of punishment or the severity of penalties. People are more likely to follow laws when they feel that authorities, particularly front-line police, treat them respectfully, listen to their concerns, and apply laws fairly to everyone. Tyler’s study, and the increasingly vast body of research that builds upon it, highlights the importance of fostering trust and legitimacy through fair treatment in everyday encounters between the public and law enforcement, but it also stresses outcomes of that fair treatment; that emphasis on procedural fairness can lead to more sustainable, voluntary law-abiding behaviour in society, and more effective (and lower cost) action by police.

Procedural justice research in policing is rich and has grown rapidly in the last couple of decades, but from a wider administrative law perspective, interests run much more broadly. Policing is, of course, only one form of public action and, arguably, a very distinct exercise of public power. Moreover, compliance with criminal law—which is naturally the central concern of criminologists—is only one of many social-side outcomes we might be interested in when we think about how the exercise of public power in everyday life has effects.

Another area where the social side effects of fair process have been studied, although far less than in a policing context, is in healthcare delivery. In the UK, NHS primary healthcare is one of the largest points of interaction between the public and public (and quasi-public) bodies. In this setting, there is an increasing realization that administrative processes can affect health outcomes in much the same way as ‘pure’ medical decision-making. In this sense, we might think of fair process as a social determinant of health in the same way that has been suggested is true of socio-economic inequality.^[12] Questions of fair administrative process are often marginalized in this field.^[13] However, there are some studies, undertaken in the USA, which clearly demonstrate the link between perceptions of fair process in primary care settings and better health outcomes.

Tyler, Mentovich, and Satyavada’s research, for instance, investigates patients’ adherence to medical recommendations made by healthcare professionals who advise them.^[14] The study investigated whether patients are more likely to follow medical advice when they perceive the decision-making process as fair and respectful. They conducted a survey study involving patients who had recent medical experiences. The survey measured patients’ perceptions of the fairness of the treatment process, including aspects like whether doctors treated them respectfully, listened to their concerns, and explained their decisions clearly. It also assessed whether patients trusted their doctors, perceived them as legitimate authorities, and adhered to the medical advice given. The study’s key findings confirmed that procedural justice plays a significant role in medical adherence. Patients were more likely to follow medical recommendations when they felt that their doctors treated them with respect, gave them a voice in the process, and explained decisions transparently. Trust in healthcare providers, shaped by these fair processes, was found to be a crucial mediator in the relationship between procedural justice and adherence. In other words, patients are more willing to defer to medical advice when they believe their doctor’s processes are legitimate and fair. The authors suggest, based on these findings, that medical professionals could improve patient outcomes and adherence by focusing on interpersonal aspects of care, particularly by ensuring that patients feel heard, respected, and involved in decision-making.

Another recent study from the USA, by Wittleder et al., found similarly powerful links between procedural justice and health outcomes.^[15] The study specifically investigates how procedural fairness in doctor-patient interactions impacts health outcomes in adults who are overweight or obese, focusing on whether patients’ perceptions of fairness, respect, and inclusion during medical consultations can predict better adherence to health recommendations and, consequently, improved health outcomes. The research was conducted with a cohort of adults and measured procedural fairness in physician–patient communication through surveys. It assessed how fairly the participants felt they were treated, whether doctors listened to their concerns, and whether they had opportunities to participate in decision-making about their health. The study also tracked key health outcomes, such as weight management and adherence to treatment plans. Key findings included that higher levels of perceived procedural fairness were associated with better health outcomes. Patients who felt they were treated fairly and respectfully by their physicians were more likely to adhere to prescribed health behaviours and experienced improvements in weight-related health metrics. The study suggests that fostering procedural fairness in medical consultations can enhance patient engagement and lead to better management of conditions like obesity, highlighting the importance of respectful and inclusive communication. The findings of this study also provide insight into the potential extent of the power of perceived procedural fairness: here, they seem to promote deep behavioural changes to everyday habits. These habits, in turn, likely have knock-on effects on the demand for services, the scale of resources required, and so on.

These studies relate to adherence to medical recommendations—arguably another form of compliance. However, it is not difficult to imagine how procedural fairness may similarly impact other attitudes and behaviours that, in turn, shape health outcomes. For instance, perceptions of procedural fairness may shape whether people seek further medical assistance at the appropriate time or take up health services at all. There are grounds to believe procedural fairness in public healthcare could be good for one’s health, and good for a public healthcare system overall, in a diverse range of ways.

Another public administrative domain where procedural fairness has been demonstrated to improve compliance with law is in taxation. Governments are constantly striving to ‘close the tax gap’—the difference between tax owed and tax paid. Getting the form of public action right here is important; the UK’s tax gap is currently estimated to be £35.8 billion (or 4.8 per cent of all tax due).^[16] Seeking to explore the potential of alternatives to direct enforcement approaches, researchers across the world have become increasingly interested in how voluntary adherence to tax rules can be increased and whether increasing perceptions of procedural fairness could achieve this.^[17]

One leading study was undertaken in Australia by Murphy.^[18] The study examines how perceptions of justice and legitimacy influence tax compliance in Australia. The study investigates whether procedural justice—the fairness of treatment by tax authorities—plays a key role in encouraging voluntary compliance, beyond the traditional deterrence model based on the fear of penalties. Murphy’s study is grounded in survey data collected from 2292 Australian taxpayers, who had experienced interactions with the Australian Taxation Office. The survey measured taxpayers’ perceptions of the fairness of these interactions, including whether they felt treated with respect and fairness by tax officials. It also assessed their feelings of trust toward the Office and the legitimacy they attributed to the authority of the tax system. Tax compliance behaviour was evaluated through questions about their willingness to pay taxes and adhere to tax laws. The findings revealed a strong relationship between procedural justice and tax compliance. Taxpayers who believed that they were treated fairly and respectfully by tax authorities were more likely to perceive the tax system as legitimate. This perception of legitimacy, in turn, was a significant predictor of voluntary tax compliance. Murphy discovered that when taxpayers viewed the tax authorities as legitimate, they were more willing to comply with tax laws, even in the absence of direct enforcement or penalties. Conversely, when taxpayers felt unfairly treated, they were more likely to resist compliance. Murphy suggests that fostering trust and perceptions of fairness in the relationship between tax authorities and taxpayers could enhance voluntary compliance, and that tax authorities could regulate more effectively by focusing on procedural fairness and legitimacy, rather than relying primarily on punitive measures to enforce compliance.

A similar study was conducted by Doyle, Gallery, and Coyle in Ireland.^[19] Again, the focus is on how procedural justice influences tax compliance, but the study looks specifically at the impact of reminder letters from tax authorities. Taxpayers in the sample group of 261 were sent one of the three different reminder letters, and there was also a control group of 86 who received no letter. Compliance behaviour of the sample was then monitored for three months. Key findings suggested that incorporating procedural justice principles in reminder letters led to more positive attitudes toward tax compliance. Taxpayers who felt they were treated fairly and respectfully in these communications were more likely to comply with tax obligations. Conversely, when letters were perceived as overly formal or punitive, compliance was less likely.

All the studies canvassed thus far show the capacity of procedural fairness to produce social side impacts and also its potential as a technique for improving the efficacy of public action. Though these studies are not without their critics,^[20] the consistency of empirical findings in the literature is a reason for optimism that pursuing further understanding of the social side of fair administrative process could be fruitful.

3. Rethinking Fair Administrative Process

If administrative law research is to take the social side of the fair process seriously, we must expand how we conceive of and study procedural fairness and its possible outcomes. This is true in at least three important ways, and I will now explain each of them in turn, by particular reference to empirical studies I have recently undertaken in this field with colleagues at the Administrative Fairness Lab. For these studies, across the last two years, we have spoken—either through detailed surveys, interviews, or focus groups—to a total of 9435 members of the UK public about their perceptions of a diverse range of administrative processes. My aim is not to discuss any particular study in detail, but to reflect more broadly on the insights, with respect to the social side of fair process, that have emerged out of undertaking this research.

A. Thinking Contingently About What Fair Process Means

First, understanding the social side of fair administrative process requires us to better understand what the public considers procedural fairness to mean—after all, what matters for social side effects is whether fair administrative process aligns with public sensibilities, not some abstract legal or theoretical definition. We have lots of valuable jurisprudence and ‘top-down’ theories on what fair process means, but surprisingly little evidence-based research (beyond criminology) on what the public actually thinks fair administrative process is.

In turn, taking subjective perceptions of fair administrative process seriously requires an acknowledgement that what people see as fair process is contingent. It is contingent in the sense that people might consider different process qualities to be salient in different sorts of interactions with the state. There might be commonalities across systems, but there are significant differences, too. The public generally also has sophisticated sensibilities about the processes they find themselves in, and they might accept ‘thinner’ processes in some situations and expect ‘thicker’ processes in others. Indeed, this is something that is also recognized in legal principles, and we are often reminded by courts that, in procedural fairness cases, context is everything.^[21] Equally, some process qualities that are central in one setting might not be relevant in other areas. For instance, for some processes, whether the application of specialist expertise is part of a process might be central, whereas it might be effectively irrelevant for others.

Evidence of the contingent nature of fair administrative process has emerged over a series of studies conducted in the Lab. We started with Tyler’s influential model of procedural justice in policing, which posits that people define fair treatment by reference to the qualities set out in Table 1.^[22] Our starting hypothesis was that the qualities people look for when assessing the fairness of processes, and how they articulate them, may differ in different settings.

Table 1.

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Tyler’s model of procedural justice (policing).

For a recent study of fair process in Universal Credit—the UK government’s flagship benefits programme of which more than six million people are in receipt—the Lab brought together researchers in law, psychology, and political science to examine what factors drove Universal Credit claimant’s perception of being treated in a procedurally fair way.^[23] Our research, based on a quantitative survey of 1514 Universal Credit claimants,^[24] proposes a new five-part model identifying the key process qualities influencing claimants’ perceptions of fair process.^[25] See Table 2 for the full model. Regression analysis of the survey data found that each of the five factors—usability, individualized treatment, dignity, efficiency, and neutrality—was a strongly statistically significant predictor of fair process. Each of the five factors is, independently (i.e., over and above the effects of the other factors) a positive predictor of people’s evaluations of fair process. Usability had a small positive association with far process. Dignity, efficiency, and neutrality had moderate positive associations. Individualized treatment had a strong positive association. The results thus point to variations in the magnitude of each factor’s predictive effects.^[26] However, the significance of the five factors (usability, individualized treatment, dignity, efficiency, and neutrality) did not vary based on respondents’ gender or ethnicity, between those in the sample who had or had not received a deduction or sanction to their Universal Credit award, between those who had or had not received help from the third sector for their claim, or between those who perceived their benefit outcome to be favourable or not. Importantly for the present point, this model is similar but also somewhat different to the model Tyler established in the policing context, suggesting that the public’s fair process expectations may vary across contexts.

Table 2.

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Model of procedural fairness in Universal Credit.

Another recent study, conducted with colleagues in law and social care, examined needs assessments in social care.^[27] No one in England can receive state support for social care without first navigating a Care Act 2014 ‘needs assessment’. With over 2 million requests for support each year and nearly 250,000 on waiting lists, the design and delivery of this process are a critical front-line component of the social care system.^[28] Local Authorities have wide-ranging discretion in how they discharge their duties and design needs assessment processes, leading to substantial variation across the country. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with twenty-one people with experience of needs assessments, we identify the process qualities that matter most to people seeking support under the Care Act 2014.^[29] We found, again, a differing set of qualities. Specifically, we identified two overarching themes in the data, each underpinned by a series of process qualities: the importance of system ‘proactivity’ and ‘dignified treatment’. Our data suggest that perceptions of ‘proactivity’ were informed through the process qualities of responsibility taking, dependability, transparency, assistance, and availability. Perceptions of ‘dignified treatment’ were underpinned by process qualities already familiar to social care researchers: personalization, empathy, and voice. This model is set out in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Model of procedural fairness in social care needs assessments.

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A model of process qualities that centre on proactivity and dignified treatment

Our research to date—which is continuing in other administrative settings—therefore reveals important distinctions between perceptions of what fair process means to the public in different sorts of interactions with government. There are commonalities in the models we have developed, but the differences suggest that what fair process means is contingent upon context, and perhaps also upon other ‘background’ factors, such as demographics. This generates more complexity than developing and adopting universal standards—though general definitions certainly still have an important place in legal and institutional practice—but unlocking the positive social-side effects of fair administrative process will require us to develop more context-specific thinking about what fair process requires. While this is a challenge methodologically and conceptually, this research is incrementally providing us with a new grammar to think about fair administrative process.

B. Thinking About How Perceptions Are Formed

Similarly, if we take the matter of subjective fair process perceptions more seriously, we quickly come to the question of how those perceptions are, in fact, formed. How do the public reach conclusions about whether administrative processes treat people fairly? Almost all thinking about fair administrative process—legal, normative, and socio-legal—typically assumes that fair process is concerned with the ‘vertical’ relationship between the individual (or group) who is the subject of the process and the public authority who is administering the process. However, researchers need to think more horizontally: that is, how the way others are treated by administrative processes shapes our own perceptions of fair treatment by the state. In reality, whether we perceive certain administrative processes as fair is often informed as much by the second-hand (or even thirdhand) experiences of friends, family, colleagues, and the wider community than our own direct experiences.^[30] In this way, vicarious perceptions of fair administrative process matter, likely have their own outcomes, and are significant in understanding social side effects.^[31] This has been demonstrated in several recent qualitative empirical studies the Lab has conducted, that found evidence of this effect across a wide range of different administrative settings.

In April of 2023, the Lab conducted a study based on forty-three interviews with Homes for Ukraine hosts.^[32] Homes for Ukraine was not a formal asylum scheme, but offered visas for those from the Ukraine to come to the UK should they have a family member or be able to locate a volunteer member of the public with spare accommodation. Among other things, the project aimed to understand volunteer hosts’ motivations for participating, the impact that the scheme had on them, and how they interacted with government in their role as host. One of the striking findings of the study was that, to put it simply, relatively middle-class people who have spare bedrooms in the UK were vicariously exposed to the bureaucratic processes experienced by refugees when newly arrived in the UK. Hosts under the Homes for Ukraine scheme interacted with a variety of different public bodies and decision-makers, either on behalf of or alongside their guests, or they simply observed such interactions. Several hosts we interviewed also became their guests’ advocate or mediator in relation to public processes, stepping in to defend their rights, galvanize parts of the system the guest would not normally have access to, speaking on their guest’s behalf, and representing them throughout interactions with service providers. Multiple sponsors said their perceptions of their guest’s experiences changed their attitudes and also potentially their future behaviours. For instance, one host explained how their evaluation of the quality of the Home Office’s operations was reversed by experiences of its processes:

I guess the biggest surprise, I think, has been how shabby the Home Office are. You’d think our Home Office, or I thought, or I had it in my head, was sleek, they knew exactly what was going on. But when you actually delve into the system, there are a lot of people that haven’t got a clue what’s going on and there’s a lot of paperwork that goes missing and files that go missing. It’s quite horrific … I wouldn’t have relied on the Home Office to tell me what they were doing and being so gullible.

Some hosts expressed that their vicarious experiences led to them questioning authority that they previously accepted. One host observed how his experience of processes changed his outlook in this respect:

It wasn’t really on my radar. In my own little world, everything was ticking along, it didn’t really affect me, as in things tick along, and I’m okay. Whereas now, I can see how inept they are and how frustrating everything is … I read things, I watched things, but it didn’t affect my little, wee world and my bubble. But now, I get very frustrated when I see and read what’s going on. So yeah, it does, it makes you more aware, I think. … I’m old-school and I was always brought up that people in authority knew what they were doing … and I just see that, actually, no, they’re absolute idiots, the lot of them.

This demonstrates, in a particular setting, how the experiences of others can shape the perceptions, outlook, and even potentially behaviours of an individual.

Returning to the area of social care needs assessments, family and friends are often present or otherwise providing support for the person undergoing the assessment. This puts people in situations where they have information to form views of fair administrative processes. One interview participant explained a common scenario in this setting:

The Council conducted their own needs assessment. I wasn’t there for that. My partner was there for that. But I kind of got the feedback from it, so I know the ins and outs of it.

It was also a striking feature of the dataset we built that people’s perceptions were also being formed not only by direct experiences or experiences of close friends and family members, but by the stories they had heard of strangers who had gone through the process. Social media community groups and the news media are often mentioned in this respect. One participant in this study mentioned how:

There’s a Facebook groups and things, and we hear a lot of different people … I can’t believe that their experiences are in the same country, let alone the same sort of you know just it’s just astonishing how different it is. It’s a real lottery.

Another mentioned hearing of news stories:

But I guess a lot of the news you hear doesn’t really encourage you, because, you know, it’s quite a long process. You hear of people who are really disabled, not getting good outcomes and humiliated.

These information flows even had the potential to override otherwise positive direct experiences of processes. In some contexts, people were even imagining hypothetical others experiencing processes they have been through to evaluate whether an administrative process was fair. For instance, sponsors from our Homes for Ukraine study would often make the following type of observations:

Yeah, I mean, it was a fairly standard Home Office form to fill in online. I say fairly standard because I deal with those forms all the time in my work. So it was just like doing any other application form really, and I thought, as I always do with these things, there are lots of ways in which someone who didn’t know the system and didn’t understand the language could get mixed up.

Not too bad to be honest. But that’s because maybe I’m used to dealing with bureaucracy and I’m used to doing things online, I’m very savvy with online stuff and online forms. Yeah, it was relatively straightforward for me, but I can see how it would be challenging for a lot of people that are maybe less familiar with those kinds of processes online.

Another important facet of how fair process perceptions are formed is shaped by the reality that the experience of government is often not one of distinct services but an interconnected experience of multiple services.^[33] People, particularly people in positions of social disadvantage or hardship, often have circumstances or problems that require them to engage with a range of public bodies and their various processes.^[34] Many service experiences are also not one-off process interactions but demand a continuing relationship between the individual and the service.^[35] Healthcare is an obvious example, but social security systems are increasingly predicated on a requirement for continuing interactions between the individual and public organizations. Even for people who infrequently engage with public bodies, a negative experience in one interaction has the potential to shape their broader outlook and future behaviour—a fair process ‘scarring effect’ of sorts.

In a 2022 survey conducted by the Lab with over 3000 adults in the UK,^[36] we found that those who felt their most recent interaction with an administrative process was fair were 3.6 times more likely to have confidence that procedures for a range of other administrative processes would be handled fairly. To be clear, this was even when controlling for previous outcomes—the perceived fairness of procedures has a significant effect on future confidence independently of the outcome. The human experience of this effect has also emerged clearly in some qualitative studies conducted within the Lab. For one recent study concerning the administration of benefits for adults with disabilities, part of the focus was on interviewing welfare rights advisors.^[37] One welfare rights advisor particularly clearly observed these scarring effects amongst the people they support:

It has this knock-on effect, you know? It permanently affects how they see the system. … If people have come in having already had a bad experience elsewhere with some other part of the state machine, that affects the way in which they can deal, deal with disability benefits. I mean, I’m thinking of, like I had a client who recently, who’s a former asylum seeker and had a very long and difficult battle with the Home Office to get leave to remain. So it kind of infects the way she sees the rest of the of the state operating. So you may find talking, you know, people don’t come to the deal with, to seeking a disability benefit with no, no prior experience of, you know, dealing with the state bureaucracy. But if they have, they may, they may approach it with a, with a suspicion, thinking that, you know, they will behave the way that they do … People may have had prior bad experiences in an apparently unrelated area, but it affects the way that they look at the benefit system.

In aggregate, across populations and services, these effects are likely significant. They point to us needing to think more about how fair process perceptions are actually formed on the ground.

C. Thinking About Diverse Outcomes

We also need to do more to recognize, and seek to understand the connections between, the full range of outcomes fair and unfair administrative processes can lead to. The current literature and evidence base is often focused too narrowly on what are, at their core, variations of compliance behaviours and attitudes linked to compliance (usually trust in authority and perceptions of legitimacy). For instance, the literature on policing is naturally concerned with compliance with criminal law. But other related studies have predominantly been concerned with issues of compliance—tax researchers have been concerned with tax compliance and even health researchers are looking at forms of compliance with advice and instruction. It is important not to understate the value of this insight and its potential for application. Compliance by the public is often what public bodies are seeking to secure, but it is not the only outcome that public action is engaged in pursuing, or more broadly interested in. As Tyler’s own work has pointed out, it is often a broader form of cooperation that public officials are seeking to achieve effective implementation of a policy.^[38] However, there also might be unintended social outcomes of fair administrative process, both positive and negative.

When thought about in these more expansive terms, it is possible to imagine that frontline administrative interactions with the state can shape a wide variety of outcomes, though the evidence for this is much more limited at present. We might theorize, for instance, that experiences of fair process might shape willingness to complain about adverse public decisions.^[39] There are also issues that have widely been studied but have generally not sought to draw connections with the way government processes treat people in everyday life. For instance, is there a link between this and whether and how people vote in elections, or participate in the political system more broadly. Similarly, there are potential connections to be drawn between fair process and mortality. This may sound far-fetched, but a recent large-scale randomized controlled trial found that reducing the administrative burden for claimants in a US social safety net programme led to a greater uptake of entitlements, and there was an estimated significant reduction in mortality as a result.^[40]

A good example from the UK can be seen in what the Department for Work and Pensions wants to achieve through the Universal Credit scheme. Of course, the Department wants benefits claimants to comply with the rules at all times, but their policy framework includes other goals.^[41] One such goal is to have people meaningfully cooperate with the Department to search for employment. For better or worse, this is increasingly common around the world: welfare systems are as much mass programmes to change attitudes and behaviours as they are about giving out money to support minimal living standards.^[42]

Returning to the Lab’s recent study of Universal Credit, we examined perceptions of fair process amongst claimants.^[43] As part of this we investigated associations between perceptions of fair process and a range of possible social side effects, including effects relevant to the policy aims of the scheme. Based on regression analysis of survey data, we found that, broadly stated, perceptions of fair process had a positive association with claimants’ willingness to share information and co-operate with the Department,^[44] and to a lesser extent, their willingness to complain or appeal.^[45] Claimants who perceived they have been subjected to fair process were more likely to report that the Universal Credit system helped them to feel more confident about finding a job or better-paid work, has raised their long-term work-related ambitions, and increased their motivation to leave Universal Credit by finding a job or better-paid work. These might sound like abstract links, but our related qualitative research provides insight into how these dynamics operate on the ground level of the system. For instance, one claimant, who felt Universal Credit processes had treated them unfairly, explained their change of approach to the benefits system:

You just get an instance of now where people who don’t want to be unemployed have been unemployed for two years because they just feel like they’re fighting the system and they don’t want to give back to the system. They’ve changed my attitude towards them. I’m now fighting against them and I don’t want to give them any money anymore and it’s kind of sad that I’m admitting that, but I don’t want to work for them because of the way that they’ve treated me. And that’s a huge turnaround compared to what it was a few years ago.^[46]

To be clear, these are possible beneficial outcomes for claimants, but they also are beneficial for the government itself. Political scientists and economists are increasingly talking about this idea—the power of the state to implement policy well—in terms of ‘state capacity.’^[47] It has been suggested that there are three core dimensions corresponding to different functions of government.^[48] ‘Fiscal capacity’ pertains to how well a government can generate revenues. ‘Legal capacity’ refers to a state’s capacity to enforce laws, secure compliance, and generally regulate. ‘Collective capacity’ concerns the ability of states to spend budgets in a manner which leads to overall value for the public through services and infrastructure. There is already strong evidence that fair process can enhance legal capacity in this sense. However, I would go further and say part of the potential of advancing understanding of the social side of fair administrative process is to explore whether and how it can contribute to enhancing state capacity more broadly.

Ultimately, fair process likely leads to a diverse range of outcomes; it is credible to suggest that fair and unfair administrative processes exert significant influence on the present conditions of our society, its relationship with government institutions, and in turn the capacity of our government institutions to improve social conditions. We need to uncover much more of this underlying structure through rigorous research on the connections between fair processes and outcomes.

4. Conclusion

In this article, I have sought to make the case that fair administrative process has an under-theorized social side and that proper engagement with it requires administrative law researchers to expand how we think about and study procedural fairness. Specifically, I have made the case we need to understand fair process in this context as contingent, that we need to do more to understand how evaluations of fair administrative process are formed amongst the public, and that we need to investigate the full range of outcomes associated with fair and unfair processes. What I have argued for increases conceptual and methodological complexity, but I have attempted to demonstrate how embracing this complexity facilitates the development of a much more nuanced and contingent grammar of this central idea of administrative law, as well as a greater understanding of its social role.

If we are able to continue advancing our understanding of the social side of fair process, two further important research agendas will likely emerge. First, there is the question of how we can improve perceptions of fair administrative process, secure more positive social side effects, and reduce negative effects.^[49] This is a question about what sorts of reforms might be effective in aligning public administrative processes with the fairness expectations of the public—in simple terms, a ‘what works?’ agenda for fair administrative process. Based on the evidence I have discussed in this article, while implementing fair process does come with inevitable trade-offs,^[50] it could well be the case that small changes can have significant social-side impacts.^[51] Second, to return to where this article began, there is an important question as to how what we learn through exploring the social side of fair process can potentially inform doctrinal and normative debates in law. It is possible to conceive of these sites of enquiry as distinct intellectual territories and, to some extent, they are. However, there is potential for the insights being developed around the social side of fair process to speak meaningfully to those more established fields of administrative law research. In her recent Chorley Lecture on the idea of ‘institutionalising interpersonal ideas in law,’ Nicola Lacey posed an important question: ‘[h]ow can we best deploy law so as to have positive effects in the social world?’^[52] Lacey posed this question in the context of regulatory frameworks in criminal law, but, as we learn more about the social world of fair administrative process, the case to revisit questions such as these in administrative law will grow. In this way, it may also provide a new means of rethinking the law and legal theory of fair administrative process.

1. Robert Thomas, ‘Analysing Systemic Administrative Justice Failures: Explanatory Factors and Prospects for Future Research’ (2021) 43 Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 339. ↑

2. I use the terms ‘procedural fairness’ or ‘fair process’ throughout for simplicity. ↑

3. Nathan D. Grundstein, ‘Administrative Law and the Behavioral and Management Sciences’ (1964) 17 Journal of Legal Education 121, 122. ↑

4. Kenneth Culp Davis, ‘Behavioural Science and Administrative Law’ (1964) 17 Journal of Legal Education 137, 152. ↑

5. Paul Craig, English Administrative Law from 1550: Continuity and Change (Oxford University Press 2024), ch. 9. ↑

6. See, e.g., Denis J. Galligan, Due Process and Fair Procedures (Oxford University Press 1996). ↑

7. See, e.g., T.R.S. Allen, ‘Procedural Fairness and the Duty of Respect’ (1998) 18 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 497. ↑

8. Jerry L. Mashaw, Bureaucratic Justice: Managing Social Security Disability Claims (Yale University Press 1983). See also: Michael Adler, ‘A Socio-Legal Approach to Administrative Justice’ (2003) 25 Law & Policy 323. ↑

9. The most sophisticated research in this respect has emerged in the context of procedural justice studies within policing, with the seminal works being those of Tom R. Tyler, see: Why People Obey the Law (Princeton University Press 2006); Why People Cooperate (Princeton University Press 2011). An excellent study that surveys much of the relevant literature across economics, political science, and psychology is Timothy Besley and Sacha Dray, ‘Trust and State Effectiveness: The Political Economy of Compliance’ (2024) 134 The Economic Journal 2225. ↑

10. For an overview, see: Christopher Donner and others, ‘Policing and Procedural Justice: A State-of-the-Art Review’ (2015) 38 Policing 153. ↑

11. See Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (n 9 above). ↑

12. For instance, see: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (Penguin Books 2010); Michael Marmot, The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World (Bloomsbury Publishing 2016). The possibility of fair process being a determinant of health was recently explored in Tom R. Tyler and Avital Mentovich, ‘Procedural Justice Theory’ in Alexander C. Wagenaar, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula and Scott Burris (eds), Legal Epidemiology: Theory and Methods (2^nd edn, Jossey-Bass 2023). See also: Stephen Thomson, ‘Administrative Law as a Determinant of Public Health’ (2024) 115 Canadian Journal of Public Health 168. ↑

13. For a refreshing recent exception, see: Leo Ewbank and others, Admin Matters: The Impact of NHS Administration on Patient Care (The King’s Fund, 23 June 2021) <https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/admin-matters-nhs-patient-care> accessed 17 April 2025. ↑

14. Tom R. Tyler, Avital Mentovich and Sagarika Satyavada, ‘What Motivates Adherence to Medical Recommendations? The Procedural Justice Approach to Gaining Deference in the Medical Arena’ (2014) 8 Regulation & Governance 350. ↑

15. Sandra Wittleder and others, ‘Procedural Fairness in Physician–Patient Communication: A Predictor of Health Outcomes in a Cohort of Adults with Overweight or Obesity’ (2024) International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12529-024-10282-6> accessed 10 January 2025. ↑

16. HM Revenue & Customs, ‘Tax gap holds steady at 4.8%’ (GOV.UK, 22 June 2023) <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/tax-gap-holds-steady-at-48> accessed 30 May 2024. ↑

17. Marius van Dijke, Lemessa Bayissa Gobena and Peter Verboon, ‘Make Me Want to Pay. A Three-Way Interaction Between Procedural Justice, Distributive Justice, and Power on Voluntary Tax Compliance’ (2019) 10 Front Psychology 1632; Jonathan Farrar, Morina Rennie and Linda Thorne, ‘Fairness, Legitimacy, and Tax Compliance’ (2022) 19 eJournal of Tax Research 186; Ronald G. Worsham Jr, ‘The Effect of Tax Authority Behaviour on Taxpayer Compliance: A Procedural Justice Approach’ (1996) 18 Journal of the American Taxation Association 19; Lemessa Bayissa Gobena and Marius Van Dijke, ‘Fear and Caring: Procedural Justice, Trust, and Collective Identification as Antecedents of Voluntary Tax Compliance’ (2017) 62 Journal of Economic Psychology 1. ↑

18. Kristina Murphy, ‘Regulating More Effectively: The Relationship Between Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and Tax Non-compliance’ (2005) 32 Journal of Law and Society 562. ↑

19. Elaine Doyle, Kieran Gallery and Mary Coyle, ‘Procedural Justice Principles and Tax Compliance in Ireland: A Preliminary Exploration in the Context of Reminder Letters’ (2009) 8 Journal of Finance and Management in Public Services 49. ↑

20. For instance, in respect of policing, see: Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean, The Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy (University of California Press 2017). ↑

21. The classic statement of this remains R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Doody [1993] UKHL 8, 14; [1994] 1 AC 531 (Lord Mustill): “The standards of fairness are not immutable. They may change with the passage of time, both in the general and in their application to decisions of a particular type.” ↑

22. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (n 9 above). ↑

23. This study was kindly funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The other members of the research team were Aleksandra Cichocka (Kent), Simon Halliday (Strathclyde), Jed Meers (York), and Ben Seyd (Kent). ↑

24. This quantitative research was underpinned by an earlier qualitative study that involves claimants, welfare rights advisors, and DWP officials, which was published as Simon Halliday, Jed Meers and Joe Tomlinson, ‘Procedural Legitimacy Logics Within the Digital Welfare State’ (2024) 31 Journal of Social Security Law 64. ↑

25. The full findings and methods are set out in Joe Tomlinson and others, Bureaucratic Justice in Universal Credit (Nuffield Foundation 2024). The survey was conducted via YouGov. ↑

26. One note of caution, though, is that individualized treatment is measured through more items (ten in total) than usability (four items) and, indeed, the other three factors. Indicators incorporating more items sometimes measure the factor more accurately, and this may explain part of the variations in the associations between each factor and fair process in the results. ↑

27. This project was kindly funded by the NIHR and was conducted in collaboration with Jed Meers (York, who led the study), Eppie Leishman (York), and Simon Halliday (Strathclyde). ↑

28. Jon Symonds and others, ‘Making Person-Centred Assessments’ (2020) 20 Journal of Social Work 431; ADASS, ‘Waiting for Care’ (ADASS, May 2022) <https://www.adass.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/adass-survey-waiting-for-care-support-may-2022-final-1.pdf≥ (accessed 17 June 2024). ↑

29. The complete methods and analysis of this study can be found in Eppie Leishman and others, ‘Person-Centred Process?: Procedural Fairness and Care Act 2014 Needs Assessments’ (2025) British Journal of Social Work (online preprint). ↑

30. Research in other disciplines have begun to explore vicarious perceptions of unfairness in various settings, see, e.g., E. Allan Lind, Laura Kray and Leigh Thompson, ‘The Social Construction of Injustice: Fairness Judgments in Response to Own and Others’ Unfair Treatment by Authorities’ (1998) 75 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 1; Jason L. Huang, Ann Marie Ryan and Bahaudin G. Mujtaba, ‘Vicarious Experience of Justice: When Unfair Treatment of One’s Colleague Matters’ (2015) 44 Personnel Review 826; Daniel Herda, ‘Experienced, Anticipated, and Vicarious Discrimination: Consequences and Resilience for Minority Adolescents’ School Engagement’ (2021) 8 Social Currents 591; David H. Chae and othrs, ‘Vicarious Racism and Vigilance During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mental Health Implications Among Asian and Black Americans’ (2021) 136 Public Health Reports 508. ↑

31. For an early analysis, see: Joe Tomlinson and others, ‘Whose Procedural Fairness?’ (2023) 45 Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 278. ↑

32. Ibid, for the full findings from this study. ↑

33. There is much administrative law can learn in this respect from the literature on the ‘common’ or ‘everyday’ place of law: Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey, The Common Place of Law (University of Chicago Press 1998). See also: David Cowan and Rosie Harding, ‘Legal Consciousness and Administrative Justice’ in Marc Hertogh and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice (Oxford University Press 2021). ↑

34. Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit, Disadvantage (Oxford University Press 2013), ch. 7; Glen Bramley and others, Hard Edges: Mapping Severe and Multiple Disadvantage in England (Lankelly Chase 2015); Ruth Levitas and others, The Multi-dimensional Analysis of Social Exclusion (Social Exclusion Task Force, Cabinet Office, 2007). ↑

35. For empirical evidence which shows that the public sometimes conceptualize their engagements with public services as a relationship, see: Simon Halliday, Jed Meers and Joe Tomlinson (above n 21). ↑

36. The survey was with 3454 adults in the UK (weighted to be representative) and was conducted by YouGov between 24th October and 4th November 2022. The survey was developed with colleagues Jed Meers (York) and Simon Halliday (Strathclyde). ↑

37. This project is led by Simon Halliday (Strathclyde) and also involves Jed Meers (York), Ruth Friskney (Strathclyde), and Ben Seyd (Kent). It is funded by the Financial Fairness Trust. ↑

38. Tyler, Why People Cooperate (n 9 above). ↑

39. See, e.g., David Cowan and Simon Halliday, The Appeal of Internal Review (Hart 2003). ↑

40. Tracee Saunders and others, ‘Burden Reduction in a Social Safety Net Programme Reduces Mortality’ (Better Government Lab, Georgetown University and University of Michigan, 2025) < https://osf.io/preprints/osf/xg7rw_v1> accessed 13 April 2025. ↑

41. For an excellent insider’s account of the development of Universal Credit, see: David Freud, Clashing Agenda: Inside the Welfare Trap (Nine Elms Books 2021). ↑

42. Much of the debate here has focused on welfare conditionality. For critical engagement in the UK context, see: Peter Dwyer and others, The Impacts of Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change (Bristol University Press 2022); Ruth Patrick, For Whose Benefit? The Everyday Realities of Welfare Reform (Bristol University Press 2017); Michael Adler, Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment? Benefit Sanctions in the UK (Palgrave Pivot 2018). ↑

43. See above for details. To be clear, what is being reported here are associations between reported attitudes and perceptions of fair process by reference to our model, as set out above. ↑

44. This was measured through two items: ‘my experience of the system makes it unlikely that I would share all my personal details with officials’; and ‘my experience of the system makes it unlikely that I would cooperate and engage fully with officials’. ↑

45. This was measured through one item on the survey: ‘I am confident in the value of complaining or appealing when things go wrong’. ↑

46. For further background on this part of the study, see above (n 24). ↑

47. Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, ‘The Causes and Consequences of Development Clusters: State Capacity, Peace, and Income’ (2014) 6 Annual Review of Economics 927. Relatedly, see: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (Crown Publishers 2012); Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, Pillars of Prosperity (Princeton University Press 2011). ↑

48. Ibid. A similarly helpful and influential framework—the ‘NATO’ framework—can be found in Christopher Hood, The Tools of Government (Palgrave Macmillan 1983). ↑

49. Similar research is being developed in the related field of administrative burden, see, e.g., Avishai Benish and others, ‘Types of Administrative Burden Reduction Strategies: Who, What, and How’ (2024) 34 Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 349. ↑

50. Jerry L Mashaw, ‘Structuring a Dense Complexity: Accountability and the Project of Administrative Law’ (2005) 5 Issues in Legal Scholarship 1; Gunther Teubner, ‘Juridification: Concepts, Aspects, Limits, Solutions’ in Gunther Teubner (ed), Juridification of Social Spheres: A Comparative Analysis in the Areas of Labor, Corporate, Antitrust, and Social Welfare Law (Walter de Gruyter 1987). ↑

51. For further evidence of this proposition, see: Jed Meers, Aisling Ryan and Joe Tomlinson, ‘Perceptions of Procedural Fairness and Space for Personal Narrative’ (2025) 52 Journal of Law and Society 81. This has also been a general insight that has emerged out of the adoption of behavioural economics by the public sector, see generally: Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (Penguin 2009). ↑

52. Nicola Lacey, ‘Institutionalising Interpersonal Ideas in Law’ (2024) 88 Modern Law Review 3. ↑