Majority representation and legitimacy: Survey-experimental evidence from the European Union

What can policy makers do in day-to-day decision making to strengthen citizens' belief that the political system is legitimate? Much literature has highlighted that the realization of citizens' personal preferences in policy making is an important driver of legitimacy beliefs. We argue that citizens, in addition, also care about whether a policy represents the preferences of the majority of citizens, even if their personal preference diverges from the majority's. Using the case of the European Union (EU) as a system that has recurringly experienced crises of public legitimacy, we conduct a vignette survey experiment in which respondents assess the legitimacy of fictitious EU decisions that vary in how they were taken and whose preferences they represent. Results from original surveys conducted in the five largest EU countries show that the congruence of EU decisions not only with personal opinion but also with different forms of majority opinion significantly strengthens legitimacy beliefs. We also show that the most likely mechanism behind this finding is the application of a ‘consensus heuristic’, by which respondents use majority opinion as a cue to identify legitimate decisions. In contrast, procedural features such as the consultation of interest groups or the inclusiveness of decision making in the institutions have little effect on legitimacy beliefs. These findings suggest that policy makers can address legitimacy deficits by strengthening majority representation, which will have both egotropic and sociotropic effects.     

Demokratie oder Fiskalunion?

What challenges do European tax states face from fiscal integration? Which structural problems need to be overcome to deepen it? Building on insights from the literature on European integration, fiscal sociology and political economy, this article shows how the heterogeneity of European tax states sets high stakes for the legitimacy of further fiscal integration. It analyses the debate on a ‘fiscal union’, which shows a yawning gap here. The article concludes that fragmentation and ‘constitutionalization’ as well as the conflicts of interest and power around fiscal issues deem the democratizing impact of further integration unlikely, though not impossible.     

In the Shadow of Brexit: The 2019 European Parliament Elections as First‐Order Polity Elections?

European Parliament (EP) elections have traditionally been described as ‘second‐order national elections' in which campaigns are fought by national parties on national issues. We argue that the 2019 elections should instead be considered ‘first‐order polity' elections. It is not EU‐level party politics or policy issues that are debated, but rather the legitimacy of the EU itself. Firstly, the EP elections have transformed into an EU ‘blame game' in which national governments are punished or rewarded over their stance on European integration. Secondly, the 2019 election was about the EU's fundamental values, not only with respect to multiculturalism, but also gender equality and LGBTQ rights. Finally, these first‐order polity elections are driven in large part by traditional news and social media platforms. While this is a long way from the patterns of the early EP elections, they still fail in fulfilling the function of holding MEPs and European party groupings adequately to account.     

Problems and process: European merger control and how to use it

This paper seeks to explore some of the public affairs principles involved in the EU mergers and acquisitions regulatory process, which affects most corporate restructuring of a European scope. Following a brief overview of the EU merger review process and the main role of public affairs in such cases, the paper explores some of the more sensitive issues that demand public affairs activities, and issues that are raised by public affairs activities. The paper focuses on the open nature of the EU merger review process, which allows for wide consultation; the imperfections within the EU merger review process, which lead to confusion as to where the exact point of decision lies; and the fact that the process is only quasi‐legal, so that competition policy and industrial policy considerations may filter into the regulator's assessment. The impact of politics is also explored; from high‐profile political interventions to low‐key political negotiations. Finally, there is a review of the perception of lobbying and the question of the legitimacy of the public affairs discipline in the context of EU merger control. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

The Priority of Legitimacy in Times of Political Transition

This paper interprets the relation between justice and legitimacy found in John Rawls's Political Liberalism and then applies it to the field of transitional justice. The author argues that transitional mechanisms can be better defended in terms of “legitimacy” than in “justice,” because the circumstances of transitional justice admit of reasonable disagreement over “just” public policy. In such circumstances, policy recommendations can always be construed as falling short of justice, thus raising plausible concerns over their normative justification. This paper attempts to answer such concerns by justifying transitional mechanisms as morally appropriate yet less than fully just. The author explains how the concept of legitimacy facilitates such a justification and how such a justification can secure the normative grounds that are ironically threatened by investigations relying on a concept of justice.     

The Convention Experience: Between Rhetoric and Participation

Abstract

This article investigates the participation of interest groups in the EU's Constituional Convention and their contribution to the debate on participatory democracy and EU governance. I argue that the constitutional moment prompted interest groups to define their priorities beyond focused policy issues to include wider principles of governance. While the Convention process was more inclusive that any previous treaty reform procedure, its institutional set up was a constraint to improving citizen participation either directly or via interest groups. The Convention reproduced a model of closed elitist politics which did not communicate sufficiently with the citizens, while the role of interest groups was restricted by a Convention designed as a drafting phase in preparation for the real decisive phase during the IGC. Despite the impact of specific domestic contexts, the ‘no’ votes in France and the Netherlands proved that civil society and participation were rhetorical devices deployed during the Convention to gain legitimacy rather than a genuine move towards a more pluralistic EU democracy capable of deploying effective mechanisms of active citizen participation.     

One size does not fit all: Matching breadth of stakeholder participation to watershed group accomplishments

The role of the public in US policy making has shifted substantially during the past several decades. This shift is particularly evident in environmental policy, where collaboration among multiple stakeholders is on the rise. Much of the literature on collaborative environmental management emphasizes the need for widespread community involvement, especially from private citizens. Many proponents of collaboration have argued that broad inclusion can lead to better environmental solutions while also establishing legitimacy, building social capital, and overcoming conflicts. Yet such broad inclusion may be costly in terms of time, energy, and resources, and it may not yield the desired results. Thus, a key question is how the breadth of public involvement is linked to collaborative group accomplishments. This study, using watershed groups in Ohio, demonstrates several links between group membership and results. Groups with a broader array of participants tend to excel in watershed plan creation, identifying/prioritizing issues, and group development and maintenance. In addition, groups comprised of a relatively balanced mix of governmental and non-governmental participants are more likely to list planning/research and group development and maintenance results than are groups comprised primarily of non-governmental participants. In contrast, groups with a narrower membership and groups that are composed primarily of non-governmental participants may focus more on pressuring government for policy change.     

The Local Legitimacy of Peacekeepers

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship and policy doctrine alike have identified local legitimacy as an important ‘success factor’ in peacekeeping – but like many such calls for greater attention to local dynamics, it is often unclear what local legitimacy actually means, how to analyse it, what causal processes are at work, and what might obstruct the operationalization of well-intentioned policy recommendations for peacekeepers to seek local legitimacy. This article aims to bring clarity to the complex concept of local legitimacy, including the ways in which insights drawn from legitimacy theory developed in very different social contexts can be adapted to the realities of the conflict societies into which peacekeepers deploy. First, it examines what it means to locate the legitimacy of peace operations at the local level, rather than the international. Second, it clarifies the causal links between peacekeepers’ legitimacy and their effectiveness, reviewing scholarship on local legitimacy and its adaptation of broader legitimacy theory. Third, it identifies three important reasons that locally legitimizing peacekeepers is so difficult in practice, distinguishing between the difficulties derived from the particular features of conflict societies and those derived from the institutional characteristics of peace operations.     

Legitimacy through targeted transparency? Regulatory effectiveness and sustainability of lobbying regulation in the European Union

Regulating interest groups’ access to decision makers constitutes a key dimension of legitimate and accountable systems of government. The European Union explicitly links lobbying regulation with the democratic credentials of its supranational system of governance and proposes transparency as a solution to increase legitimacy and regulate private actors’ participation in policy making. This lobbying regulation regime consists of a Transparency Register that conditions access to decision makers upon joining it and complying with its information disclosure requirements. The extent to which transparency‐based regulatory regimes are successful in ensuring effective regulation of targeted actors and in being recognised as a legitimate instrument of governance constitutes a key empirical question. Therefore, the study asks: Do stakeholders perceive the transparency‐based EU lobbying regulation regime to be a legitimate form of regulatory governance? The study answers by building on a classic model of targeted transparency and proposes perceived regulatory effectiveness and sustainability as two key dimensions on which to evaluate the legitimacy of the Register. The arguments are tested on a new dataset reporting the evaluations of 1,374 stakeholders on the design and performance of the EU lobbying regulation regime. The findings describe a transparency regime that scores low in perceived effectiveness and moderate to low in sustainability. Citizens criticise the quality of information disclosed and the Register's performance as a transparency instrument. The Register did not effectively bridge the information gap between the public and interest groups about supranational lobbying. In terms of sustainability, interest organisations appreciate the systemic benefits of transparency, but identify few organisation‐level benefits. Organisations that are policy insiders incur more transparency costs so they instrumentally support transparency only insofar it suits their lobbying strategies and does not threaten their position. Insiders support including additional categories of organisations in the Register's regulatory remit but not more types of interactions with policy makers. They support an imperfect regulatory status quo to which they have adapted but lack incentives to support increased transparency and information disclosure. Targeted transparency proves an ineffective approach to regulating interest groups’ participation in EU policy making, constituting a suboptimal choice for ensuring transparent, accountable and legitimate supranational lobbying.     

The parable of the poisoned pork: Network governance and the 2008 Irish pork dioxin contamination

The 2008 contamination of Irish pork with dioxins was one of the most significant recent food safety incidents in the European Union (EU). While the contamination posed no real risk to public health, it tested the efficacy of EU food safety regulation and governance which has been considerably overhauled in the past decade. The exchange of risk information through networks of regulators is an important element of the EU food safety risk management framework. Networks are a much‐lauded form of new governance, though they are not without their problems. In this paper, we address the question of why governance networks can fail. We examine this issues using the case study of the 2008 Irish dioxin contamination and explore the reason for the failure to make more substantial use of networks in the governance of that incident. We hypothesize that the reason for such failure may be found in three inherent tensions which exist in the design and management of networks, namely flexibility/stability, inclusiveness/efficiency, and internal/external legitimacy. The paper concludes that by ensuring the external legitimacy of the EU's Rapid Alert System for Feed and Food (RASFF) through increased transparency of communications, the design of RASFF has stifled its internal legitimacy with regard to certain types of important information exchanges.     

Public Administration, Science, and Risk Assessment: A Case Study of the U.K. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Crisis

The bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak in the United Kingdom is regarded as one of the worst public policy crises the British government has experienced during the postwar era. In material terms, it has led to the slaughter of 3.3 million cattle and estimated economic losses of £3.7 billion. In administrative terms, the crisis brought about the dissolution of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This article examines the istitutional context in which decisions about the scientific evidence on BSE were made. The authors argue that a centralized system in which government agencies control science for government is inherently vulnerable to alliances of experts and interest groups that undermine the credible assessment of public health and safety risks. Specific societal conditions may encourage risk-opportunistic behavior among policy makers that is conducive to delays and inaction until such time as the evidence of a health risk becomes overwhelming.     

A Strategic Theory of Bureaucratic Redundancy

Do redundant bureaucratic arrangements represent wasteful duplication or a hedge against political uncertainty? Previous attempts at addressing this question have treated agency actions as exogenous, thus avoiding strategic issues such as collective action problems or competition. I develop a game‐theoretic model of bureaucratic policy making in which a political principal chooses the number of agents to handle a given task. Importantly, agents have policy preferences that may be opposed to the principal's, and furthermore may choose their policy or effort levels. Among the results are that redundancy can help a principal achieve her policy goals when her preferences are not aligned with the agents'. But redundancy is less helpful if even a single agent has preferences relatively close to the principal's. In this environment collective action problems may cause multiple agents to be less effective than a single agent. Redundancy can also be unnecessary to the principal if the agent's jurisdiction can be terminated.     

Reforming policy roles in the Jordanian policy‐making process

The aim of this diagnostic analysis is to identify the weaknesses in the process of reforming policy in Jordan. This study will first present a diagnostic analysis of the characteristics of administrative reform in Jordan. Following this, weaknesses will be identified with a focus on policy roles in the policy‐making process. Administrative reform has long been an area of interest and development in Jordan since the early 1980s. Conferences were held, political and technical committees formed, and expertise and resources invested. The outcomes of these programs have been below expectations, with inadequate impact. This investigation paid attention on how Jordan can best invest its resources to maximize efficiency in the public sector, specifically the process of reforming policy. This study concludes that the primary factor impacting efficiency, accountability, and responsiveness is the degree of authority at both national and organizational level. Recent efforts in Jordan to tackle these issues could create more conflicts that threaten the Jordanian government's stability. Other resources have been dedicated to reviewing the rules and values that govern the relationship between state and society.     

Nurturing regulatory compliance: Is procedural justice effective when people question the legitimacy of the law?

Procedural justice generally enhances an authority's legitimacy and encourages people to comply with an authority's decisions and rules. We argue, however, that previous research on procedural justice and legitimacy has examined legitimacy in a limited way by focusing solely on the perceived legitimacy of authorities and ignoring how people may perceive the legitimacy of the laws and rules they enforce. In addition, no research to date has examined how such perceptions of legitimacy may moderate the effect of procedural justice on compliance behavior. Using survey data collected across three different regulatory contexts – taxation (Study 1), social security (Study 2), and law enforcement (Study 3) – the findings suggest that one's perceptions of the legitimacy of the law moderates the effect of procedural justice on compliance behaviors; procedural justice is more important for shaping compliance behaviors when people question the legitimacy of the laws than when they accept them as legitimate. An explanation of these findings using a social distancing framework is offered, along with a discussion of the implications the findings have on enforcement.     

The legitimacy of occupation authority: beyond just war theory

ABSTRACT

So far, most of the philosophical literature on occupations has tried to assess the legitimacy of military rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts by exclusively employing the theoretical resources of just war theory. In this paper, I argue that this approach is mistaken. Occupations occur during or in the aftermath of wars but they are fundamentally a specific type of rule over persons. Thus, theories of political legitimacy should be at least as relevant as just war theory for the moral evaluation of occupations. This paper, therefore, draws on both traditions and argues that just war theory plays a limited role in identifying the purposes and appropriate agents of occupation authority, but that theories of legitimacy are necessary for explaining why and under which conditions foreign actors have the right to rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts.     

Expecting something special? Developing assumptions of involvement organised interests as a source of regulatory quality in the European Union

Organised interests play a double role in policymaking: as representatives of societal interests and as policy experts adding to regulatory quality. The former of these 2 roles has been examined over and over again, whereas the latter has almost completely evaded scholarly interest for a number of reasons. One reason is that it demands a focus on output rather than on traditional darlings such as representation, input legitimacy, or influence. Another is that it demands an interdisciplinary approach as regulatory quality—that which the involvement of organised interests seek to furnish—is a concept that includes elements from both law and political science. The question of how to design involvement of organised interests in order to support regulatory quality, however, is a question with both academic and practical relevance. Building on an empirical study, this paper attempts to spur theorising to address this relevant question. The result is 4 assumptions that describe the relationship between involvement of organised interests and regulatory quality.     

Legitimacy Problems in Deliberative Democracy

The classic accounts of deliberative democracy are also accounts of legitimacy: 'that outcomes are legitimate to the extent they receive reflective assent through participation in authentic deliberation by all those subject to the decision in question' ( Dryzek, 2001 , p. 651). And yet, in complex societies deliberative participation by all those affected by collective decision-making is extremely implausible. There are also legitimacy problems with the demanding procedural requirements which deliberation imposes on participants. Given these problems, deliberative democracy seems unable to deliver legitimate outcomes as it defines them.
Focusing on the problem of scale, this paper offers a tentative solution using representation, a concept which is itself problematic. Along the way, the paper highlights issues with the legitimate role of experts, the different legitimate uses of statistical and electoral representation, and differences between the research and democratic imperatives driving current attempts to put deliberative principles into practice, illustrated with a case from a Leicester health policy debate. While much work remains to be done on exactly how the principles arrived at might be transformed into working institutions, they do offer a means of criticising existing deliberative practice.     

Narrative analysis for the policy analyst: A case study of the 1980–1982 medfly controversy in California

Narrative policy analysis provides a way of analyzing those highly uncertain and complex policy issues whose truth-value cannot be ascertained and about which the only thing practicing policy analysts know are the stories policymakers use in articulating these issues. One extremely well-documented controversy, the 1980-82 California Medfly Crisis, illustrates how a comparison and analysis of the structure of the dominant stories in that controversy reduces some of its underlying uncertainty. By focusing on the differential risk perceptions reflected in the stories, narrative policy analysis identifies an important area in which conventional policy analysis could have contributed to the controversy's resolution.     

Balancing constituency and congruence: How constituency involvement affects positional congruence between organized interests and the general public

This article asks to what extent and under which conditions interest groups are congruent with public opinion. We argue that interest groups can be caught in a balancing act between engaging with their constituency on the one hand and aligning their position with the broader public on the other hand. We contribute to previous studies by arguing that the effect of interest group type on congruence is moderated by the degree to which constituencies are involved in advocacy processes and the salience of policy issues. We test these expectations by analyzing 314 media claims made by Belgian interest groups regarding 58 policy issues. The results demonstrate that citizen groups with formal members are more prone to share the position of the broader public compared to concentrated interest groups such as business associations, especially if they involve their members in advocacy activities and when issues are salient in the media.