Legitimacy from Decision-Making Influence and Outcome Favourability: Results from General Population Survey Experiments

Abstract

Democracies are typically considered more legitimate than other types of regimes because they allow the citizens to participate in the policy decision-making process. Others argue that the policy output matters most, and citizen influence plays a lesser role. This study presents two survey experiments on the micro foundations of these two sources of political legitimacy, thus contributing to an emerging literature that experimentally investigates the effects of democratic procedures in small-scale settings. Respondents who saw the decision going in their favour found the decision much more acceptable than the respondents who preferred another outcome. Conversely, decision-making influence generally did not serve as a legitimising factor among the respondents. This result supports the argument that citizens prefer a stealth democracy where they are minimally involved in democratic decision-making processes. Keywordsinput legitimacy, output legitimacy, survey experiment, stealth democracy Accepted: 11 July 2016 This study presents two survey experiments that aim to uncover the effect of perceived decision-making influence on receptivity to specific decisions. They also measure to what degree the favourability of the outcome matters to the evaluation of the decisions. As such, the study contributes to an emerging political science literature on experiments with decision-making processes and their impact on legitimacy beliefs (Esaiasson et al., 2012(Esaiasson et al., , 2016Persson et al., 2013). These micro-level empirical studies take a novel and complementary approach in examining a central question in studies of democracy that tend to

The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: Evidence from a population‐based survey experiment in four West European countries

“…Our study thereby relates to an emerging strand of literature in political science that uses experimental approaches to investigate citizens' legitimacy beliefs and their assessment of various decision-making arrangements (see Tyler 1994;Esaiasson et al 2012;Arnesen 2017). Since we are interested in the relationship between different attributes of governance arrangements that drive citizens' evaluations, an experimental design that allows a random variation of these attributes is the best strategy for studying how these variations affect citizens' legitimacy beliefs.…”

“…Previous experimental studies on similar topics focus on how various modes of decision making in small-scale settings affect individual assessments of procedural fairness (Tyler 1994;Esaiasson et al 2016b), or decision acceptability (Esaiasson et al 2016a;Arnesen 2017). Previous experimental studies on similar topics focus on how various modes of decision making in small-scale settings affect individual assessments of procedural fairness (Tyler 1994;Esaiasson et al 2016b), or decision acceptability (Esaiasson et al 2016a;Arnesen 2017).…”

“…While political scientists have a certain inclination to endorse the argument that system performance is the more important driver of legitimacy beliefs than democratic procedures (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002;Esaiasson et al 2016a;Arnesen 2017) -especially when it comes to specific support for political institutions and actors (cf. Easton 1965) -there is also evidence showing that opportunities for participation and active involvement in decision making as such are highly valued by citizens (Tyler 2000;Bengtsson & Mattila 2009;Esaiasson et al 2012).…”

“…Some scholars find that citizens strongly prefer to participate in collective decision making (e.g., Tyler 2000; Bengtsson & Mattila 2009;Esaiasson et al 2012). But findings by others suggest the opposite -namely that citizens have strong preferences for 'stealth democracy' (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002) in that they mainly care about the substance of decisions, and much less about the procedures leading to them (see also Arnesen 2017). These two positions nicely echo the tension, established by democracy theory, between input and output legitimacy (Scharpf 1999).…”

The Legitimacy of Representation: How Descriptive, Formal, and Responsiveness Representation Affect the Acceptability of Political Decisions

“…Studies have shown that outcome favorability is an important factor for the acceptance of a decision (Arnesen, 2017). Citizens are likely to be concerned with the outcome of the decision, and we thus expect that the legitimacy is higher when the decision is in line with the respondent's preference.…”