Thinking Holistically About Procedural Justice in Alternative Dispute Resolution: A Case Study of the German Federal Ombudsman Scheme

Abstract

This article examines data collected from users of the German Federal Ombudsman Scheme (GFOS). The data was collected as part of a research project to understand how the GFOS operates in practice and how its procedures and outcomes are accepted by its users. We begin from the premise that experience of procedural justice during this alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process will build institutional legitimacy, and the article makes three contributions to the literature on procedural justice. First, we extend evidence of the link between procedural justice and legitimacy to a novel institutional context that is different in many ways to the criminal justice focus of much of the extant literature. Second, we consider the motivations of service users to engage with ADR as potential moderators of that link. Third, we analyze the relationship between procedural justice, subjective outcomes, and the actual outcomes provided to service users. Overall, we conclude that the link between procedural justice and legitimacy can be identified among those with very different motivations for using the GFOS.