Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:31:11.841Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Process vs. Outcome? How to Evaluate the Effects of Participatory Processes on Legitimacy Perceptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Hannah Werner Open the ORCID record for Hannah Werner [Opens in a new window]  and
Sofie Marien Open the ORCID record for Sofie Marien [Opens in a new window]
Hannah Werner*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Sofie Marien
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The potential for participatory processes to address deficits in perceptions of legitimacy is strongly debated. This letter discusses how to evaluate the effects of participatory procedures. It argues that participatory processes should not be compared to normative ideals about how citizens should behave, but rather to the status quo of representative decision making. The authors use the example of winner–loser gaps in perceptions of fairness to illustrate the importance of evaluation frameworks, drawing on twelve experiments from the Netherlands and Sweden (total N = 5,352). The study shows that the choice of benchmarks matters substantially for the interpretation of process effects. When comparing participatory processes to the status quo of representative decision making, it finds higher fairness perceptions for a participatory process than for a representative process across all twelve experiments, even when the outcomes are unfavourable.

Keywords

participatory processprocedural fairnesslegitimacydecision makinglosers’ consent
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 429 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, CH and Bartels, LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400882731CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, CJ et al. (2005) Losers’ Consent: Elections and Democratic Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnesen, S (2017) Legitimacy from decision-making influence and outcome favourability: results from general population survey experiments. Political Studies 65(1S), 146–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arvai, JL and Froschauer, A (2010) Good decisions, bad decisions: the interaction of process and outcome in evaluations of decision quality. Journal of Risk Research 13(7), 845–859.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banducci, SA and Karp, JA (2003) How elections change the way citizens view the political system: campaigns, media effects and electoral outcomes in comparative perspective. British Journal of Political Science 33(3), 443–467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, BR (1984) Strong Democracy. Participatory Politics for A New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Beauvais, E and Warren, ME (2018) What can deliberative mini-publics contribute to democratic systems? European Journal of Political Research 58(3), 893–914.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blader, SL and Tyler, TR (2003) Personality and social psychology bulletin defining the meaning of a ‘fair’ process. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 29(36), 747–758.10.1177/0146167203029006007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boulianne, S (2018) Mini-publics and public opinion: two survey-based experiments. Political Studies 66(1), 119–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniller, A (2016) Politics as Sport: The Effects of Partisan Media on Perceptions of Electoral Integrity. Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
De Cremer, D, Cornelis, I and Van Hiel, A (2008) To whom does voice in groups matter? Effects of voice on affect and procedural fairness judgments as a function of social dominance orientation. The Journal of Social Psychology 148(1), 61–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Doherty, D and Wolak, J (2012) When do the ends justify the means? Evaluating procedural fairness. Political Behavior 34(2), 301–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Wakil, A (2018) The Role of Citizens in Referendum Processes. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Hamburg, 22–25 August.Google Scholar
El-Wakil, A and Mckay, S (2019) Disentangling referendums and direct democracy: a defence of the systemic approach to popular vote processes. Representation. Doi: 10.1080/00344893.2019.1652203.Google Scholar
Esaiasson, P (2011) Electoral losers revisited – how citizens react to defeat at the ballot box. Electoral Studies 30(1), 102–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esaiasson, P, Gilljam, M and Persson, M (2012) Which decision-making arrangements generate the strongest legitimacy beliefs? Evidence from a randomised field experiment. European Journal of Political Research 51(6), 785–808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esaiasson, P et al. (2019) Reconsidering the role of procedures for decision acceptance. British Journal of Political Science 49(1), 291–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimes, M (2006) Organizing consent: the role of procedural fairness in political trust and compliance. European Journal of Political Research 45(2), 285–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, J (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to A Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannah, W and Sofie, M (2020) “Replication Data for: Process vs. Outcome? How to Evaluate the Effects of Participatory Processes on Legitimacy Perceptions”, https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS, Harvard Dataverse, V1.Google Scholar
Herian, MN et al. (2012) Public participation, procedural fairness, and evaluations of local governance: the moderating role of uncertainty. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 22(4), 815–840.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibbing, JR and Theiss-Morse, E (2008) Voice, validation and legitimacy. In Sullivan, BA, Snyder, M and Sullivan, J (eds), Cooperation: The Political Psychology of Effective Human Interaction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 123–142.Google Scholar
Hug, S (2009) Some thoughts about referendums, representative democracy, and separation of powers. Constitutional Political Economy 20(3–4), 251–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jäske, M (2019) Participatory innovations and maxi-publics: the influence of participation possibilities on perceived legitimacy at the local level in Finland. European Journal of Political Research 58(2), 603–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leung, K, Tong, KK and Allan Lind, E (2007) Realpolitik versus fair process: moderating effects of group identification on acceptance of political decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92(3), 476–489.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marien, S and Kern, A (2017) The winner takes it all: revisiting the effect of direct democracy on citizens’ political support. Political Behavior 40, 857–882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marien, S and Werner, H (2018) Fair treatment, fair play? The relationship between fair treatment perceptions, political trust and compliant and cooperative attitudes cross-nationally. European Journal of Political Research 58(1), 72–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moehler, DC (2009) Critical citizens and submissive subjects: election losers and winners in Africa. British Journal of Political Science 39(2), 345–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olken, BA (2010) Direct democracy and local public goods: evidence from a field experiment in Indonesia. American Political Science Review 104(2), 243–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pateman, C (1970) Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, M, Esaiasson, P and Gilljam, M (2013) The effects of direct voting and deliberation on legitimacy beliefs: an experimental study of small group decision-making. European Political Science Review 5(3), 381–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabl, A (2015) The two cultures of democratic theory: responsiveness, democratic quality, and the empirical-normative divide. Perspectives on Politics 13(2), 345–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sintomer, Y, Herzberg, C and Röcke, A (2008) Participatory budgeting in Europe: potentials and challenges. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32(1), 164–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, G (2009) Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strebel, MA, Kübler, D and Marcinkowski, F (2019) The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: evidence from a population-based survey experiment in four West European countries. European Journal of Political Research 58(2), 488–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terwel, BW et al. (2010) Voice in political decision-making: the effect of group voice on perceived trustworthiness of decision makers and subsequent acceptance of decisions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 16(2), 173–186.Google ScholarPubMed
Tyler, TR (1990) Why People Obey the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tyler, TR (2011) Why People Cooperate: The Role of Social Motivations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ulbig, SG (2008) Voice is not enough. Public Opinion Quarterly 72(3), 523–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, M (2017) A problem-based approach to democratic theory. American Political Science Review 111(1), 39–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werner, H and Marien, S (2020) “Replication data for Process vs. Outcome? How to Evaluate the Effects of Participatory Processes on Legitimacy Perceptions”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZNG7PM, Harvard Dataverse, V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Werner and Marien supplementary material

Werner and Marien supplementary material

Download Werner and Marien supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 256.2 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Werner and Marien Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZNG7PM
Link