Boosting Public Confidence in U.S. Agency Policymaking

Abstract

Scholars have documented a steep decline in Americans' trust in the bureaucracy. This trend is problematic because it threatens the legitimacy of democratic policymaking by public sector agencies. We hypothesize that the participation of the bureaucracy's elected political principals in agency policy decision-making increases public confidence in the regulatory process. To test this argument, we implement a vignette-based survey experiment with roughly 1350 people in a politically divided U.S. state. The experimental evidence demonstrates that, even when controlling for partisanship, public confidence in state agency policymaking increases when legislators and the governor are actively engaged in the process. To some, these results may be surprising: how could the participation of elected government actors—who, themselves, are often held in such low esteem—boost public confidence? Others may view the findings as a normative rationale for further structural design reforms that encourage the involvement of elected representatives in agency rulemaking.