How innovation in participation could increaselegitimacy

Regula Hã„nggli Fricker () and Leopold Weil ()
Additional contact information
Regula Hã„nggli Fricker: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm
Leopold Weil: https://www.unifr.ch/dcm

No 532, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: Legitimacy is the bedrock of any democratic regime. Effective governance crucially relies on citizens’support of the political system and the decisions it produces. This study investigates how participatory budgeting as a novel form of political participation relates to legitimacy perceptions. In a conjoint vignette survey experiment, we asked respondents to rate the legitimacy of hypothetical participatory budget decision processes, relating to a Swiss local context and differing in three attributes: (1) the opportunity to introduce policy proposal (agenda-setting), (2) the opportunity to vote on a proposal according to different voting methods, (3) whether the decision is in line with the respondent’s policy preferences or not. We find that participation in agenda-setting, (preferential) voting, and outcome favorability significantly increase the perceived legitimacy of participatory udgeting processes. However, our findings suggest that novel participation opportunities do not alleviate the difference in perceived legitimacy between the winners and losers created by policy decisions.

Keywords: Legitimacy; Democratic Innovations; Participatory Budgeting; Voting Methods; Decision-marking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/326580/files/WP_SES_532.pdf?download (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fri:fribow:fribow00532

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/326580

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland Bd de Pérolles 90, CH-1700 Fribourg. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mustapha Obbad ().