Beyond parliamentarism: How do citizens want to decide on divisive policies?

Abstract

Europeans, on average, are distrustful toward representative institutions. In recent decades, to restore confidence in political institutions, several countries have implemented alternative decision-making processes. The literature has analyzed preferences for these alternatives, such as direct democracy or technocracy, and their drivers. However, these analyses often treated these preferences in isolation, without considering that citizens might have more complex preferences involving multiple actors in the decision-making process. We test whether this complexity exists in a novel survey experiment where citizens are exposed to two different vignettes about divisive policies in Italy. Our results indicate that, more than anything else, Italian citizens prefer having their fellow citizens decide alone in referendums. However, they also favor consulting experts before Parliament's decision. Furthermore, we demonstrate that while instrumentality is still crucial in evaluating the fairness of the processes, certain decision-making processes make losers of the policy outcome as satisfied as specific groups winners. These findings hold significant implications for citizens' policy evaluations, highlighting that the decision-making process might influence their overall satisfaction with policies.

Appendices

Appendix A

Inheritance tax issue. Estimated means for Figs. 1, 2, and 3; replication of Fig. 2 with 90% confidence intervals (Fig. 4, Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5).

Fig. 4

Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Parliament making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus the scenario in which the Parliament makes the decision after consulting citizens versus scenarios in which the Parliament makes the decision after consulting experts. Alpha = 0.1, instead of 0.05

Table 2 Estimated means for Fig. 1

Table 3 Estimated means for Fig. 2

Table 4 Estimated means for Fig. 3

Table 5 Estimated means for Fig. 4

Appendix B

Inheritance tax issue. Replication of Figs. 1, 2, and 3 in the main text without neutral response (for the inheritance tax issue) (Figs. 5, 6, and 7, Tables 6, 7 and 8).

Fig. 5

Replication of Fig. 1, without neutral responses for the policy issue (inheritance tax)

Fig. 6

Replication of Fig. 2, without neutral responses for the policy issue (inheritance tax)

Fig. 7

Replication of Fig. 3, without neutral responses for the policy issue (inheritance tax)

Table 6 Replication of Fig. 1 (see also Table 2)

Table 7 Replication of Fig. 2 (see also Table 3)

Table 8 Replication of Fig. 3 (see also Table 4)

Appendix C

Soft drug legalization issue. Replication of Figs. 1, 2, and 3 with estimated means reported in the corresponding tables (Tables 9, 10 and 11).

Table 9 Estimated means for Fig. 8

Table 10 Estimated means for Fig. 9

Fig. 8

Soft drug legalization issue. Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Parliament making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus people making the final decision alone (“Direct democracy”) versus a technocratic government making the final decision alone (“Technocracy”)

Fig. 9

Soft drug legalization issue. Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Parliament making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus the scenario in which the Parliament makes the decision after consulting citizens versus scenarios in which the Parliament makes the decision after consulting experts

Fig. 10

Soft drug legalization issue. Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Citizens making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus scenarios in which the citizens make the decision after consulting other actors versus scenarios in which the experts make the decision alone versus scenarios in which the experts make the decision after consulting other actors

Table 11 Estimated means for Fig. 10

Appendix D

Soft drug legalization issue. Replication of the figures in Appendix C without neutral response (for the soft drugs legalization issue) (Tables 12, 13 and 14).

Table 12 Estimated means for Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Soft drug legalization issue, replication without neutral responses. Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Parliament making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus people making the final decision alone (“Direct democracy”) versus a technocratic government making the final decision alone (“Technocracy”)

Fig. 12

Soft drug legalization issue, replication without neutral responses. Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Parliament making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus the scenario in which the Parliament makes the decision after consulting citizens versus scenarios in which the Parliament makes the decision after consulting experts

Fig. 13

Soft drug legalization issue, replication without neutral responses. Support to the decision-making process according to whether respondents approve or disapprove the policy outcome: Citizens making the decision alone (“Parliament”) versus scenarios in which the citizens make the decision after consulting other actors versus scenarios in which the experts make the decision alone versus scenarios in which the experts make the decision after consulting other actors

Table 13 Estimated means for Fig. 12

Table 14 Estimated means for Fig. 13