PERCEPTIONS ABOUT COMPLIANCE WITH LAW AND VULNERABLE GROUPS IN BRAZIL / / Luciana

Sumary:


Introduction
This paper aims at analyzing the perception of vulnerable social groups about the e ectiveness of the rule of law in Brazil.Our main purpose is to investigate how women and black people deal with the compliance with the law and with some authorities' orders in Brazil: are their perceptions about compliance with the law di erent from men's and white people's perceptions?Then, the second purpose of this paper is to identify the reasons that could explain these specific social groups' perceptions.
The data presented in this paper are based on results of two indicators: the first one is called "Brazil Perception of Compliance with the Law Index" (BPCLI) and the second one "Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index" (BCJI), both coordinated by the Escola de Direito de São Paulo of the Fundação Getulio Vargas.The purpose of BPCLI is measuring, though a survey, the perception of the Brazilian population regarding the compliance with the law and to authorities who are directly involved with law enforcement, as well as identifying the drivers that help us to understand these perceptions.To discuss the degree of e ectiveness of the rule of law in Brazil, a survey that measures perceptions, attitudes and habits of Brazilians regarding compliance with law has been conducted.The BCJI, in turn, is a measure of perception, which shows the opinion of the population about Brazil's judiciary.The respondents must issue their opinion on justice regarding nine features: confidence; speed in solving conflicts; cost of access; ease of access; political independence; honesty; ability to solve conflicts; panorama of the last 5 years and expectation for the next 5 years.
There is a strong connection between compliance with the law and confidence in the Justiciary, since if the law is enforced on fair grounds, people will be more likely to obey the law and to rely more on the judicial system.However, if people feel they receive an unfair treatment by those institutions, they will rely less on the justice system and will be less likely to obey the laws.Some authors emphasize this connection declaring that societies with more trust have better governance, stronger economic growth, spend more on redistribution, and have greater respect for the law among the citizenry (Uslaner, 2002).
Considering that Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world, in terms of income inequality1 , gender diversity and race inequality, we assume that social groups commonly excluded from the decisionmaking processes have di erent perceptions about the rule of law than those groups that are part of the political and economic system as a rule.Gender and race inequalities are structural axes of social inequality in Brazil, which, in turn, is at the root of the reproduction of poverty and social exclusion (Abramo, 2006).So, this paper focuses on gender, income and race inequality.Some authors in political theory have argued that modern societies based on the social contract have ignored gender and race inequality.Carole Pateman, one of the most well-known political theorists, and her co-author sustain that gender justice is neglected and racial justice is almost completely ignored by the contract theory (Pateman and Mills, 2007).This is true for Brazil, since women do not have the same opportunities than men in the labor market, political system and also in the private sector.Brazil has one of the lowest rates of women in Parliament: there are only 9.9% female deputies in Brazilian Chamber, which places it in the 115th position out of 145 countries evaluated in the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking (Alves, 2014).Also, only a few women reach high ranking positions in private companies , since the proportion of women in positions of senior management in Brazilian companies is currently around 8% (Di Miceli et al., 2014).Moreover, some studies have identified di erences between men and women' wages as a result of gender discrimination (Nomura, 2010).According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in 2011 women received only 70.4% of the labor income of men.
Regarding race inequality, there are many di erences between black and white populations in most dimensions of Brazilian society.Considering the 2010 Census developed by the IBGE, 50,7% of the Brazilian population are black and 47,7% declare themselves white, we have an overwhelming scenario of inequality in terms of education access, since only 8.3% of the black people between 18 and 24 years were at university in 2009, while 21.3% of young whites in the same age bracket went to the university in that same year (IPEA, 2011).In addition, black's wages are lower than the whites: in 2009, the income of blacks was equivalent to 57% of whites.Considering the relation between poverty and the distribution of income, current data shows that 20% of the white population in Brazil was below the poverty line, while 43% of the black population was in the same vulnerable situation (UNIFEM, IPEA, 2003).This paper will be divided in four sections.The first section is the introduction, while section 2 is dedicated to describing the research methods and the presentation of our sample.In the third section, we present the main results of the research survey and analyze them.In the last section there is a brief conclusion.

2
Sample and Research Design Our results are based on eleven waves of a survey conducted along 2012.We conducted this survey through telephone contact.Our sample consists of 6,049 respondents distributed by the states: Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Distrito Federal, which together represent approximately 60% of the population, according to the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística -IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) census of 2010.Table 1 provides an overview of the sample.
We used a method of proportional quota sampling, using the following quotas: gender, household income, education, age and economic status (economically active or not).The groups (strata) were proportionally distributed according to the 2010 Census and National Household Sample Survey 2009 2 .Table 1 2 The National Household Sample Survey -NHSS investigates every year and on a continuous basis, overall population provides an overview of the sample.

Table 1. Sample Description
The sample is distributed through 7 states, which according to 2010 census data together correspond to approximately 60% of the country's population.The sample size was determined by the number of inhabitants in each state.The sampling frame was constructed so as to have a range of 95% and an absolute sampling error of 2.5%.Dummy variable that takes value one when the respondent has knowledge of the judiciary, and zero otherwise;

States
Table 3 presents descriptive statistics for covariates.We found that 48% of respondents had experience with the Judiciary.In terms of demographic characteristics, 54% of respondents are women and 50.7% are blacks.Among di erent kind of incomes, people receive between 4 and 12 minimum wages have presented the highest rate (40%).The means of schooling years and age are 9.3 and 41, respectively.Our sample is similar to Brazilian demographic data in terms of gender and race.The black and brown population is 50.7% and the women population is 51%, according to the 2010 Census.In regard of income, the number of households with monthly per capita income between 0 and 2 minimum wages represent 63% of Brazilian population.In our sample, the proportion is 34.2%.Households with monthly per capita income between 2 and 4 minimum wages represent 32% of population.In our sample the proportion is 17%.
In parts, this di erence in terms of per capita income can be explained by two reasons.Firstly, because we have some richest Brazilian states in our sample like São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais e Rio Grande do Sul.The second reason regards the measure used for income.Despite Census uses per capita income per household, the survey conducted by São Paulo Law School of Fundação Getulio Vargas uses the total income per household.Finally, we also can observe that there is a di erence in terms of schooling years.
According to Census 2010, the mean of years of formal schooling is 7.9 for people who are older than18 years old.In our sample, the mean of years of formal schooling is 9.3.The BCJI is calculated as the average from a set of nine questions covering the main aspects of confidence in justice.Each question has the same weight within the index.Thus, to compute the BCJI, we sum all 9 questions, and then divide by 9.The BCJI has a range between 0 and 10.For each question, we use the weighted average of responses.Thus, to compute weighted average of first question about confidence in justice we used four response categories that include: 1 = Unreliable, 2 = untrustworthy, 3 = reliable and 4 = very reliable.Table 4 describes the BCJI and their components.
The creation of BPCLI is based on Tyler's work (2006) and developed five indicators.The first one measures the dimension of behavior, which depicts the frequency with which respondents report having performed actions that somehow represent disobedience to the law.The second indicator measures fear of sanctions, in the instrumental perspective, indicating the perception of losses associated with the violation of the law.The third indicator is the morality one, which measures the perception of respondents about how much is right or wrong to engage in those situations.
The fourth indicator is the social control, which measures the perception of social disapproval of performing those actions.Last, but not least, the indicator of legitimacy, which measures the perception of obedience to the law and the commands of authorities that should enforce the law.The Brazil Perception of Compliance with Law Index (BPCLI) is calculated as the average from five indicators.Table 4 presents weighted average for each component of the BCJI and BPCLI.

components.
The questions that constitute the questionnaire admit either four or five responses.Each question is identified by assigning an index n to its response, which also corresponds to a value assigned to that response.Thus, the first response, i.e., the answer 0, is assigned the value 0. To the last response is assigned the maximum value, which can be either 3 or 4 depending on whether the question has four or five possible responses.The values are first normalized so as to range between 0 and 10, and then weighted according to the proportion of each question.To compute the BCJI, we first sum the weighted responses for all 9 questions, and then divide by 9.

BPCLI Indicator of Legitimacy
The indicator of legitimacy measures the perception of obedience to the law and the commands of authorities that should enforce the law.We presented eight statements about people's behavior to the law and the orders of o icials and asked respondents to say how much they agreed with each statement, with possible responses being: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree.

Q1
People Many personal characteristics are potentially associated with the Brazil Perception of Compliance with the Law Index.We therefore include some control variables to reduce omitted variable bias.We use the following control variables: states dummies, year dummies, employee, and marital status where X_(i,t) is a vector of control variables.
In order to examine the relationship between these features and the questions of BPCLI, we use pooled OLS for each question.

Empirical results
According to the methodology aforementioned, we achieved the results summarized in the following six tables.The table 5 presents the results of BPCLI and each sub-index.The tables 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 present the results of sub-indexes and each question.
As indicated by data in table 5, there is a positive and significant relationship between the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) and Perception Index of Compliance with the Law (BPCLI), which means that the higher the confidence in justice, the higher is the perception of compliance to the law.Except for the morality sub-index, the same result is found in all other sub-indexes comprising the BPCLI.
Table 5 also reveals that women have a higher level of BPCLI than men, since the former shows more confidence in justice and has a better perception of the compliance to the law in Brazil than the latter.This result stems from the behavior, morality and social control sub-indexes.So, women's perception of compliance to law is higher than men's because women claim that they comply with the law more than men, consider that the unlawfulness is wrong and due to the fear of being socially disapproved.
Moreover, we find an inverse result of BPCLI for blacks and people with experience with the justice system.In other words, these groups have a negative perception about the compliance with the law by the Brazilian citizens.The inverse relationship of BPCLI for black people can be explained by the behavior sub-index.In part, this result is related to the social vulnerability of blacks in Brazil.Some studies also show that blacks su er discrimination in Brazil.Twine (1998), Reichmann (1999), Burdick (1998), andSheri (2000) have provided some evidence of racism experienced by Afro-Brazilians.The inverse result for people who have had experience with the justice system is related to all the sub-indexes.We also find a positive relationship of BPCLI with variable age and income for people earning between four and twelve times the minimum wage.The results indicate that older people have a more positive perception of the justice system than younger people can be explained by the behavior, social control and morality sub-indexes.On the other hand, the behavior, instrumentality, social control and morality subindexes explain the positive e ect between income and BPCLI.A er the joint analysis of BPCLI and its sub-indexes, we will move on to the analysis of each sub-index.
The table 6 refers to the indicator of legitimacy, which measures the perception of obedience to the law and the commands of authorities that should enforce the law.We presented eight statements about people's behavior related to the law and the orders of o icials and asked respondents to say how much they agreed with each statement, with possible responses being: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree.For the legitimacy indicator we used the following statements: Q1.
People should obey the law even if it goes against what they think is right; Q2.Disobeying the law is seldom justified; Q3.Someone who disobeys the law is poorly viewed by others; Q4.If a person goes to court because of a dispute with another person, and the judge rules them to pay the other person money, they should pay that person money even if they disagree with judge's decision; Q5.If a person is doing something and a police o icer tells them to stop, they should stop even if they disagree with the public authority; Q6.There are few reasons for a person like me would obey the law in Brazil; Q7.It's easy to disobey the law in Brazil; Q8.Whenever possible people choose to "find a way around it"" (jeitinho) instead of following the law.
The data in table 6 reveals a positive and significant relationship between the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) and most questions from the legitimacy subindex.For women, someone who disobeys the law is poorly viewed by others and disobeying the law is seldom justified.For women and blacks, there are few reasons for a person like them obey the law in Brazil.We also found a positive relationship of age and income for people earning between four and twelve times the minimum wage with some questions of legitimacy.Finally, we found a negative result for people with experience with the justice system in most questions.
Focusing on vulnerable groups such as women and blacks, table 6 indicates a very interesting result.
There are only two groups that strongly agree that there are few reasons to a person like them to comply with law: women and blacks.By these results, we can conclude that they recognize their vulnerability since they do not feel that laws represent their own interests.Other possible explanation refers to the fact that there are other groups in Brazilian society who are privileged and they are not used to comply with the law because of their privileged position.
Although women and blacks agree with the statement that there are few reasons for a person like them to obey the laws, they have di erent reactions regarding compliance with law.Women, despite the feeling that there is little reason for them to obey the laws, comply more with laws than men.This result can be explained by the fact that women have a greater fear that their behavior would be rejected by his friends, neighbors and family.Blacks, on the other hand, have a di erent reaction since they tend to behave more lawlessness than whites.One of the ways of interpreting this result refers to the blacks' perception of the legitimacy of the laws.The results indicate that they have a negative perception of the legitimacy of the rules, which means that they considered them to have little or no legitimacy.So, they do not believe in the enforcement of the rule of law, since they consider the laws are not entitled to determine their own behavior and impose sanctions to attitudes of disobedience to the law.The next table refers to behavior sub-index.This indicator measures the dimension of behavior, which depicts the frequency with which respondents report having performed actions that somehow represent disobedience to the law.This indicator was developed based on ten di erent situations, to which we ask respondents how o en they performed each situation over the past 12 months, and the possible answers are: o en, sometimes, rarely, almost never or never.Those situations are: 1) Make enough noise to disturb your neighbors; 2) Litter in violation with the law (in illegal places); 3) Drive an automobile or motorcycle while intoxicated (like a er consuming alcohol); 4) Take inexpensive items from a store without paying for them; 5) Park your car or motorcycle in violation of the law (prohibited spot); 6) Buy "pirate products", such as DVD, shoes, purse, cigarette, etc.; 7) Use a fake student Id to purchase half price tickets; 8) Give money to a police o icer or any other public o icial in order to avoid being fined; 9) Smoke where is not allowed (like bars, restaurants, o ices, etc.) and 10) Cross the street outside the crosswalk.
Table 7 shows that there is a positive and significant relationship between the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) and people that buy pirated products.Although there is no rational reason for that, prima facie could explain this result, it is possible to find a justification considering that most Brazilians are not aware that buying pirated products is a crime and violates the copyright law, since it is possible to find many pirate product sellers o ering their products on the streets.This common practice may mislead people to think that buying pirated products is not illegal anymore.
We also find that women have higher levels for behavior sub-index than men.Therefore, the results in table 7 reinforces the idea that women obey the laws more o en than men, considering that women's behavior sub-index is higher than men's behavior subindex in 8 of 10 cases analyzed in this survey.Except for taking inexpensive items from a store without paying for them and using a fake student ID to purchase half price tickets, women comply with the law more o en than men in all other situations.
Blacks and people who had experience with the justice system directly or indirectly have lower levels of the behavior sub-index.
Di erently than women, blacks showed a lower level of behavior sub-index than whites in 4 situations: making enough noise to disturb your neighbors; littering in violation with the law; buying pirated products; and crossing the street outside of the crosswalk.This means that blacks consider they have performed these attitudes more frequently than whites in the past 12 months.
The data in table 8 refers to the instrumentality subindex.This indicator measures fear of sanctions, in an instrumental perspective, indicating that the perception of losses associated with the violation of the law.
In order to measure this sub-index, we asked respdents how likely they think they are to be punished for engaging in those ten previous situations.The possible answers were: very likely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely or very unlikely.The situations are the same as the behavior sub-index.
Analyzing table 8, we find a positive and significant relationship between the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) and all questions regarding the instrumentality sub-index.These results illustrate what is the concept of judicial system engaged in the respondents' answers.According to such data, the judicial power is tied to the notion of state punishment derived from the violation of law, since those who have confidence in justice believe they would probably be punished if they did not comply with the law.
For women, there is a positive and significant relationship for the following questions: taking inexpensive items from a store without paying for them; buying pirated products and crossing the street outside of the crosswalk.It means that women believe they are more likely to be punished in these three situations.
Concerning black people, we had a very important result that is worth mentioning: they believe they are unlikely to be punished only if they are crossing outside the crosswalk.Thus, blacks have the perception that they could be punished in almost all situations (in 9 out of 10).This perception confirms the argument that in Brazil black defendants tend to be persecuted by police surveillance more o en than whites, that they face greater barriers to access to the criminal justice system and they have the greatest di iculties to enjoy the right to legal defense guaranteed by the constitutional requirements.Furthermore, blacks tend to receive a more rigorous penal treatment, represented by the most likely to be punished compared to white defendants (Adorno, 1995).Making enough noise to disturb your neighbors; Q2: Littering in violation with the law; Q3: Driving an automobile or motorcycle while intoxicated; Q4: Taking inexpensive items from a store without paying for them; Q5: Parking in a prohibited spot; Q6: Buying pirated products; Q7: Using a fake student Id to purchase half price tickets; Q8: Giving money to a police o icer or other public o icial to avoid being fined; Q9: Smoking where is not allowed; Q10: Crossing the street outside of the crosswalk.For each question Q1, Q2 until Q10 the table shows coe icients of the Pooled OLS.Another indicator that is part of the BPCLI is the social control sub-index.This indicator measures the perception of social disapproval of performing those actions.We have asked respondents to think of their friends and family, and how much they would disapprove their conduct in performing each of these situations, and the possible answers are: a lot, somewhat, almost nothing or nothing.The situations are the same as in the behavior sub-index.
The table 9 shows that there is a strong and positive relationship between confidence in justice and social control.It means that the notion of justice is related to some kind of punishment.But, in this case, we are dealing with the punishment by society, not by the state (as it happens with the instrumentality subindex).
The results also show that women's attitudes are more influenced by social control than men's behaviors.Except for making enough noise to disturb your neighbors and littering in violation with the law, there is a positive relationship between women and social control sub-index in all of the other situations.
For blacks, they do not believe they would be the target of social disapproval in three situations: making enough noise to disturb your neighbors; littering in violation with the law and taking inexpensive items from a store without paying for them.The first two situations are the same ones considered by women as less socially reprehensible.
Finally, table 10 refers to the morality sub-index.This indicator measures the perception of respondents about how much is right or wrong to engage in these situations.We have asked respondents to consider their own feelings about what is right and wrong, and answer to how right or wrong they think engaging in the aforementioned situations is.The possible answers are: very wrong, slightly wrong, almost nothing wrong or nothing wrong.The situations are the same as the ones analyzed in the behavior sub-index.
The data presented in table 10 reveal a positive result of BPCLI for women in 6 cases of unlawfulness: driving an automobile or motorcycle while intoxicated; park-ing in a prohibited spot; buying pirated products; giving money to a police o icer or other public o icial to avoid being fined; smoking where is not allowed; and crossing the street outside of the crosswalk.In other words, doing any of the attitudes listed above is considered very or slightly wrong by women.We also find a positive result of BPCLI for the elderly in all situations, which indicates that the higher the age, the higher is the morality sub-index.So, older people consider very wrong or slightly wrong disobeying the law more o en than younger people.

4
Concluding remarks This paper provides a picture of the degree of e ectiveness of the rule of law in Brazil by showing how some vulnerable social groups, such as women and black people, deals with the compliance with the law and with some authorities' orders in Brazil.We have also identified some reasons that could explain the perceptions of these specific social groups.Our results are based on two indicators: "Brazil Perception of Compliance with the Law Index" (BPCLI) and "Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index" (BCJI).
According to our data, we concluded that the higher the confidence in justice, the higher is the perception of law enforcement, which means that there is a positive and significant relationship between the BCJI and BPCLI.Other relevant finding is that women have a higher level of BPCLI than men, since the former shows more confidence in justice and has a better perception of the compliance with the law in Brazil than the latter.This conclusion derives from the behavior, social control and morality sub-indexes.
Our investigation indicated how Brazilian citizens understand the Judiciary.We have found a positive and significant relationship between the Brazilian Confidence in Justice Index (BCJI) and all questions regarding the instrumentality sub-index.This result illustrates what is the concept of judicial system involved in the respondents' answers.According to these data, the judicial power is tied to the notion of state punishment derived from the violation of law, since those who have confidence in justice believe they would probably be punished if they do not comply with the law.Furthermore, we found that blacks have a worst perception of the compliance with the law in comparison with white people.In other words, blacks understand that Brazilian society seldom complies with the law.This result of BPCLI for blacks can be explained by the behavior sub-index.
Regarding the instrumentality sub-index, we found that blacks believe they are likely to be punished if they performed all the actions evaluated, except if crossing outside the crosswalk.This perception rein-forces the idea that in Brazil black defendants tend to be persecuted by police surveillance more o en than whites, that they face greater barriers to access the criminal justice system, and they have the greatest di iculties to enjoy their constitutional right to a legal defense, and tend to receive a more rigorous penal treatment, represented by the fact that they are most likely to be punished as compared to white defendants (Adorno, 1995) This paper innovates when it shows some patterns regarding the two vulnerable groups analyzed here: women and blacks.The analysis of the legitimacy index enabled us to find that women and blacks are the only two groups that strongly agree that there are few reasons for a person like them comply with the law.These groups reveal the lowest level of legitimacy showing that they recognize their vulnerability since they do not feel that the laws represent their interests and desires.This finding also indicates that, according to the perceptions of the respondents, there are other groups in Brazilian society who are privileged and they are not used to complying with the law because ofconsidering their privileged position.

Table 2
, in turn, details the variables that control for individual's heterogeneity.WomanDummy variable that takes value one when the respondent is female, and zero otherwise; characteristics, education, labor, income and housing, among others, for di erent periods according to the need of information about the country, as well as characteristics about migration, fertility and other topics.Perceptions about compliance with Law and vulnerable groups in Brazil / Luciana Ramos, Joelson Sampaio, Rodrigo Bueno, Luciana Cunha

Table 3 .
Descriptive Statistics for Covariate
If a person is doing something and a police o icer tells them to stop, they should stop even if they disagree with the public authority; Q6:There are few reasons for a person like me obey the law in Brazil; Q7: It's easy to disobey the law in Brazil; Q8: Whenever possible people choose to take a "knack" (jeitinho) instead of following the law.For each question Q1, Q2 until Q8 the table shows coe icients of the Pooled OLS.
Perceptions about compliance with Law and vulnerable groups in Brazil / Luciana Ramos, Joelson Sampaio, Rodrigo Bueno, Luciana Cunha Notes: 1) Control variables are: state, year dummies, employee, marital state and a constant.2) T-statistics (heteroskedasticity-consistent for cross-sectional OLS) are in parentheses.*, **, and *** respectively indicate significance levels at 10%, 5%, and 1% levels.Significant results (at 5% level or better) are in boldface.3) Q1: People should obey the law even if it goes against what they think is right; Q2: Disobeying the law is seldom justified; Q3: Someone who disobeys the law is poorly viewed by others; Q4: If a person goes to court because of a dispute with another person, and the judge rules them to pay the other person money, they should pay that person money even if they disagree with judge's decision; Q5:

Table 8 -
Determinants of Instrumentality - Perceptions about compliance with Law and vulnerable groups in Brazil / Luciana Ramos, Joelson Sampaio, Rodrigo Bueno, Luciana Cunha 105