State Legitimacy and Sector of Employment

Based on Social Identity Theory (SIT), this paper analyzes whether state employees (in-group) have higher state legitimacy beliefs than employees working in the private sector (out-group). Using the fifth and the sixth waves of the World Values Survey and using a legitimacy measure that is based on Norris (1999), multi-level analyses provide evidence in favor of our hypothesis. State employees show significantly higher state legitimacy beliefs than employees working in the private sector. However, it remains unclear whether this effect is driven by social comparisons (SIT) or is simply a result of labor market selection mechanisms.