Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe examine the relationship between procedural fairness and the legitimacy of rulemaking decisions made by government agencies. Evidence from a survey experiment indicates that the perceived fairness of the rulemaking process is closely tied to procedures designed to make it more transparent and to encourage greater citizen participation. However, our findings do not indicate that fair procedures bestow unconditional legitimacy on agency rulemaking actions. Rather, they suggest that the effect of procedural fairness is context-dependent and complex, with legitimacy perceptions varying across policy domains and being driven by the institutional avoidance of procedural controls rather than the procedures themselves. Thus, there may be significant limitations on the ability of fair procedures to impart legitimacy to bureaucratic policymaking.

AbstractWe seek to understand the incentives facing Congress members to hold executive agencies accountable. Specifically, we explore whether Congress members are rewarded for taking politically costly oversight actions. We evaluate the effect of oversight activities on citizens' evaluations of Congress members, taking into account the member's partisanship, the citizen's partisanship and agency ideology. Using a survey experiment, we find evidence that citizens' evaluations of members are affected by the members' oversight activity, with both copartisan and cross-party members rewarded for oversight efforts. Politically costly actions against ally agencies, however, do not appear to be rewarded to a greater extent by copartisans. These results provide insight into the way in which citizens interpret oversight activities by Congress members, suggesting that while good governance actions hold value for citizens, costly oversight actions aimed at ally agencies are not rewarded by copartisan citizens more than politically expedient oversight actions.