People’s preferred balance between politicians, citizens, and experts in policy-making decisions

Tessa Haesevoets, Bram Verschuere and Arne Roets

Policy Studies, 2025, vol. 46, issue 3, 317-342

Abstract: Most prior studies examining citizens’ preferences for “who should govern” assume that people prefer either politicians, citizens, or experts to exclusively influence policy decisions. Our approach posits that individuals may actually prefer a mix of these actors. Across two studies, we discovered that people indeed favour the involvement of all three actors in policy decisions, but with specific relative importance assigned to each of them. Notably, our second study clarified that which actor should have the largest say depends on the specific issue at hand, with citizens outweighing experts and politicians for ideological issues and experts outweighing citizens and politicians for technical issues. These findings are particularly relevant, given that these two actors were found to outperform each other in a different legitimacy dimension. That is, citizens’ contribution is seen most in terms of input legitimacy, whereas experts are perceived as contributing most to output legitimacy, particularly for technical issues. In contrast, politicians are considered to contribute the least to all three legitimacy dimensions. To enhance the perceived legitimacy of policy decisions among the citizenry, it becomes crucial for policymakers to embrace a more “hybrid” perspective, acknowledging the value of a more diverse collaboration between politicians, citizens, and experts.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2024.2323673

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