The Context of Fear of Crime : The Importance of Quality of Government in Europe

Fear of crime is a social problem on its own, partly independent of crime as actual crime does not fully explain as to why some individuals are more afraid for crime than others. Structuralist perspectives have offered some explanations, largely neglecting the potential importance of institutional perspectives. This thesis aims to study fear of crime from an institutional perspective using the theoretical construct quality of government which seeks to offer a way to measure well-functioning institutions. It is assumed that quality of government has an impact in different ways; through trust and victimisation. To study these research questions, data were drawn from two sources, the European Social Survey (ESS) and Quality of Government EU Regional Data. The sample contained 85,794 individuals nested in 152 regions which were situated in 18 European countries. The empirical analysis consisted of random intercept multilevel modelling. It was found that the quality of government was correlated with fear of crime, where higher levels of the former tended to result in lower levels in the latter. Trust were found to mediate this correlation whereas victimisation interacted with quality of government