Abstract
This study investigates the effects of social and political accountability arrangements on citizens’ legitimacy perceptions. Accountability arrangements are often suggested to improve the perceived legitimacy of governmental organizations. Based upon a pre-registered vignette experiment with a representative sample of N = 1574 citizens from the Netherlands, we show that social accountability (accountability to citizens) increases legitimacy perceptions, but that political accountability (accountability to politicians) does not affect legitimacy perceptions. These patterns are highly similar for both decision winners and losers, with accountability slightly more important for losers. This has important implications for our understanding of the impact of accountability for perceived legitimacy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3365-3389 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Public Management Review |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| Early online date | 4 Apr 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Lars Brummel's work on this article was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, as part of the NWO Vid-project Calibrating Public Accountability (452-14-008). Lisanne de Blok's work on this article was supported financially by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Affairs of the Netherlands.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, as part of the NWO Vid-project Calibrating Public Accountability | 452-14-008 |
| Ministry of the Interior | |
| Kingdom Affairs of the Netherlands |
Keywords
- Accountability
- legitimacy
- political accountability
- procedural fairness
- social accountability