Revisiting Responsibility Attribution within Multilevel Governments: The Role of Information

Ana Herrero-Alcalde (), José Manuel Tránchez Martín () and María Goenaga Ruiz de Zuazu ()
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Ana Herrero-Alcalde: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
José Manuel Tránchez Martín: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
María Goenaga Ruiz de Zuazu: Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, 2018, vol. 226, issue 3, 37-58

Abstract: Recent research has shown that citizens living in decentralized countries struggle to identify which level of government is designing and implementing public policies, thus hindering the due accountabil¬ity process of democracy. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of citizens´ re¬sponsibility attribution by analyzing the Spanish case. A novel methodological approach is used by separately analyzing those citizens who fail to identify the competent level of government and those who did not even give an answer. Besides, two novel hypotheses are tested regarding the process by which information is transmitted to and absorbed by citizens: the impact of regional media and the territorial group bias. After confirming that the methodological strategy is correct, we find strong evi¬dence that the existence of regional media helps responsibility attribution, thus fostering accountabil¬ity; while co-official languages, used as a proxy of a group bias, hamper the process by which citizens identify the competent level of government.

Keywords: Visibility; responsibility attribution; decentralization; regional governments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H71 H72 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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