Although performance information is widely promoted to improve the accountability of public service provision, behavioral research has revealed that motivated reasoning leads recipients to update their beliefs inaccurately. However, the reasoning processes of service users has been largely neglected. We develop a theory of public service users’ motivated reasoning about performance information stemming from their identification with the organization providing their services. We address a significant challenge to studying motivated reasoning—that widely used existing research designs cannot rule out alternative cognitive explanations, especially Bayesian learning, such that existing findings could be driven by strong prior beliefs rather than biased processing of new information. We use a research design incorporating Bayesian learning as a benchmark to identify departures from accuracy motivated reasoning process. We assess the empirical implications of the theory using a preregistered information provision experiment among parents with children using public schools. To assess their identity based motivated reasoning we provide them with noisy, but true, performance information about their school. Overall, we find no evidence of directionally motivated reasoning. Instead, parents change their beliefs in response to performance feedback in a way that largely reflects conservative Bayesian learning. Performance reporting to service users is less vulnerable to motivational biases in this context than suggested by the general literature on motivated reasoning. Furthermore, exploratory findings show that performance information can correct erroneous beliefs among misinformed service users, suggesting that investment in reporting performance to service users is worthwhile to inform their beliefs and improve accountability.
{"title":"Public Service Users’ Responses to Performance Information: Bayesian Learning or Motivated Reasoning?","authors":"Peter Rasmussen Damgaard, Oliver James","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae013","url":null,"abstract":"Although performance information is widely promoted to improve the accountability of public service provision, behavioral research has revealed that motivated reasoning leads recipients to update their beliefs inaccurately. However, the reasoning processes of service users has been largely neglected. We develop a theory of public service users’ motivated reasoning about performance information stemming from their identification with the organization providing their services. We address a significant challenge to studying motivated reasoning—that widely used existing research designs cannot rule out alternative cognitive explanations, especially Bayesian learning, such that existing findings could be driven by strong prior beliefs rather than biased processing of new information. We use a research design incorporating Bayesian learning as a benchmark to identify departures from accuracy motivated reasoning process. We assess the empirical implications of the theory using a preregistered information provision experiment among parents with children using public schools. To assess their identity based motivated reasoning we provide them with noisy, but true, performance information about their school. Overall, we find no evidence of directionally motivated reasoning. Instead, parents change their beliefs in response to performance feedback in a way that largely reflects conservative Bayesian learning. Performance reporting to service users is less vulnerable to motivational biases in this context than suggested by the general literature on motivated reasoning. Furthermore, exploratory findings show that performance information can correct erroneous beliefs among misinformed service users, suggesting that investment in reporting performance to service users is worthwhile to inform their beliefs and improve accountability.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141182521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Robin H Lemaire, Lauren K McKeague, Donna Sedgwick
The flexibility/stability tension is a key challenge for purpose-oriented networks, especially salient with network participation. Because of the voluntary nature of networks, it is common for network participation to fluctuate, with participants entering, leaving, and returning over time for a variety of reasons. This fluctuation may challenge the stability that is key to network effectiveness. Yet, despite the salience of this tension, we know little about managing the ebb and flow of network participation. Driven by phenomenon-based theorizing, we draw on longitudinal participatory action research to examine participant attendance and contribution in monthly workgroup meetings over a four-year period of an early child education network. Combining interviews (n=5), meeting attendance tracking (n=37), and meeting observations (n=30), we identify six types of flux stemming from individual, organizational, and system forces. We find these forces of flux support both flexibility and stability. Highlighting the duality of flexibility and stability, we explain how flexibility at one level may result in stability at another and vice versa. Our findings contribute to a greater understanding of how stability and flexibility are both valuable for networks and thus, the need to embrace the ebb and flow of participation.
{"title":"Ebb and Flow of Network Participation: Flexibility, stability and forms of flux in a purpose-oriented network","authors":"Robin H Lemaire, Lauren K McKeague, Donna Sedgwick","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae012","url":null,"abstract":"The flexibility/stability tension is a key challenge for purpose-oriented networks, especially salient with network participation. Because of the voluntary nature of networks, it is common for network participation to fluctuate, with participants entering, leaving, and returning over time for a variety of reasons. This fluctuation may challenge the stability that is key to network effectiveness. Yet, despite the salience of this tension, we know little about managing the ebb and flow of network participation. Driven by phenomenon-based theorizing, we draw on longitudinal participatory action research to examine participant attendance and contribution in monthly workgroup meetings over a four-year period of an early child education network. Combining interviews (n=5), meeting attendance tracking (n=37), and meeting observations (n=30), we identify six types of flux stemming from individual, organizational, and system forces. We find these forces of flux support both flexibility and stability. Highlighting the duality of flexibility and stability, we explain how flexibility at one level may result in stability at another and vice versa. Our findings contribute to a greater understanding of how stability and flexibility are both valuable for networks and thus, the need to embrace the ebb and flow of participation.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140910648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Issue prioritization is the first stage of attention-based theories of decision-making, but remains theoretically and empirically uncharted territory in public administration research. We propose and test how issue prioritization is informed by the characteristics of the performance information on which decision-makers rely, in particular its source (internal or external information), nature (objective or subjective information), aspiration level (historical, social, or coercive aspirations), and required cognitive effort (attention costs). Furthermore, we theorize how these characteristics of performance information determine issue prioritization decisions of political and managerial decision-makers in different ways. We empirically examine issue prioritization decisions in road maintenance and primary school education using a discrete choice experiment among 2,313 local government officials. The experiment reveals that decision-makers are more likely to prioritize issues that are signaled through objective performance measures and that are articulated relative to coercive aspirations, but that the effects of the information’s source and attention costs differ between policy domains. Comparison of observational variation regarding decision-makers’ roles indicates that public managers more strongly prioritize road maintenance issues that are articulated in objective performance information, but not in primary school education. The study advances public administration research and theory with a ‘horizontal’ behavioral perspective on decision-makers’ information processing to prioritize between simultaneous performance issues.
{"title":"Performance information and issue prioritization by political and managerial decision-makers: A discrete choice experiment","authors":"Joris van der Voet, Amandine Lerusse","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae011","url":null,"abstract":"Issue prioritization is the first stage of attention-based theories of decision-making, but remains theoretically and empirically uncharted territory in public administration research. We propose and test how issue prioritization is informed by the characteristics of the performance information on which decision-makers rely, in particular its source (internal or external information), nature (objective or subjective information), aspiration level (historical, social, or coercive aspirations), and required cognitive effort (attention costs). Furthermore, we theorize how these characteristics of performance information determine issue prioritization decisions of political and managerial decision-makers in different ways. We empirically examine issue prioritization decisions in road maintenance and primary school education using a discrete choice experiment among 2,313 local government officials. The experiment reveals that decision-makers are more likely to prioritize issues that are signaled through objective performance measures and that are articulated relative to coercive aspirations, but that the effects of the information’s source and attention costs differ between policy domains. Comparison of observational variation regarding decision-makers’ roles indicates that public managers more strongly prioritize road maintenance issues that are articulated in objective performance information, but not in primary school education. The study advances public administration research and theory with a ‘horizontal’ behavioral perspective on decision-makers’ information processing to prioritize between simultaneous performance issues.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"84 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140820048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fernando Nieto-Morales, Rik Peeters, Gabriela Lotta
Bribery and other forms of petty corruption typically arise in bureaucratic encounters and are a common element of the everyday experience of the state in many countries, particularly in places with weak institutions. This type of corruption is especially troublesome because it creates direct costs for citizens when accessing services and benefits to which they are formally entitled. However, only a few studies deal with how situational attributes of bureaucratic interactions create incentives for citizens to pay bribes and opportunities for street-level bureaucrats to demand them. We contribute to filling this gap by providing evidence that administrative burdens increase the chance of bribery. We do so by analyzing the prevalence of (attempted) bribery in more than 63,000 interactions across 20 different types of bureaucratic encounters, ranging from paying taxes to accessing essential services, using multilevel logistic regression analysis. Our study contributes to understanding the possible consequences of administrative burdens and the factors conducive to petty corruption in specific citizen-state interactions.
{"title":"Burdens, Bribes, and Bureaucrats: The Political Economy of Petty Corruption and Administrative Burdens","authors":"Fernando Nieto-Morales, Rik Peeters, Gabriela Lotta","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae010","url":null,"abstract":"Bribery and other forms of petty corruption typically arise in bureaucratic encounters and are a common element of the everyday experience of the state in many countries, particularly in places with weak institutions. This type of corruption is especially troublesome because it creates direct costs for citizens when accessing services and benefits to which they are formally entitled. However, only a few studies deal with how situational attributes of bureaucratic interactions create incentives for citizens to pay bribes and opportunities for street-level bureaucrats to demand them. We contribute to filling this gap by providing evidence that administrative burdens increase the chance of bribery. We do so by analyzing the prevalence of (attempted) bribery in more than 63,000 interactions across 20 different types of bureaucratic encounters, ranging from paying taxes to accessing essential services, using multilevel logistic regression analysis. Our study contributes to understanding the possible consequences of administrative burdens and the factors conducive to petty corruption in specific citizen-state interactions.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"53 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140640262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The U.S. bureaucracy routinely issues major public policy decisions that affect Americans’ lives. Government agency leaders make those decisions based on a subjective understanding of their agency’s available policy discretion. Over time, discretion has become a prominent theoretical construct in the bureaucratic politics and public administration literatures, but it is rarely measured directly. In this article, we create a new measure of agency policy discretion. We draw on research suggesting that discretion is derived from the bureaucracy’s key political principals: the elected executive, legislators, and interest groups. We use data from the American State Administrators Project and trigonometry to calculate the discretion area scores for 8,955 state agencies between 1978 and 2018. We then evaluate the measure through a series of construct validation assessments. The article offers an innovative and generalizable way to operationalize discretion that will advance future scholarship in organizational behavior, public administration, and bureaucratic decision-making.
{"title":"A New Measure of U.S. Public Agency Policy Discretion","authors":"Natalie L Smith, Susan Webb Yackee","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae007","url":null,"abstract":"The U.S. bureaucracy routinely issues major public policy decisions that affect Americans’ lives. Government agency leaders make those decisions based on a subjective understanding of their agency’s available policy discretion. Over time, discretion has become a prominent theoretical construct in the bureaucratic politics and public administration literatures, but it is rarely measured directly. In this article, we create a new measure of agency policy discretion. We draw on research suggesting that discretion is derived from the bureaucracy’s key political principals: the elected executive, legislators, and interest groups. We use data from the American State Administrators Project and trigonometry to calculate the discretion area scores for 8,955 state agencies between 1978 and 2018. We then evaluate the measure through a series of construct validation assessments. The article offers an innovative and generalizable way to operationalize discretion that will advance future scholarship in organizational behavior, public administration, and bureaucratic decision-making.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140533266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study aims to investigate the impact of organizational change in a public sector high- reliability context. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, our theoretical model posits that change can be stressful and cause negative affective reactions toward the change, which undermine adjustment and post-change functioning. A quantitative case study was carried out on a Dutch air force squadron undergoing a significant organizational change, including the collection of three waves of survey data from squadron members. The data underwent analysis through a process of moderated mediation. Consistently with the theoretically derived hypotheses, results show that negative affect towards the change predicted important adjustment indicators, i.e., higher levels of work role overload and work errors. Furthermore, we found that the detrimental effects of negative affect were mitigated by the level of normative commitment to change, i.e., the felt obligation to provide support for the change. Overall, the study's intended contribution lies in its detailed examination of change dynamics in the specific context of public high-reliability organizations and its potential to inform theory and practice in that area.
{"title":"Adapting to Organizational Change in a Public Sector High-Reliability Context: The Role of Negative Affect and Normative Commitment to Change","authors":"Armin Pircher Verdorfer, Gerco van Ginkel","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae009","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to investigate the impact of organizational change in a public sector high- reliability context. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, our theoretical model posits that change can be stressful and cause negative affective reactions toward the change, which undermine adjustment and post-change functioning. A quantitative case study was carried out on a Dutch air force squadron undergoing a significant organizational change, including the collection of three waves of survey data from squadron members. The data underwent analysis through a process of moderated mediation. Consistently with the theoretically derived hypotheses, results show that negative affect towards the change predicted important adjustment indicators, i.e., higher levels of work role overload and work errors. Furthermore, we found that the detrimental effects of negative affect were mitigated by the level of normative commitment to change, i.e., the felt obligation to provide support for the change. Overall, the study's intended contribution lies in its detailed examination of change dynamics in the specific context of public high-reliability organizations and its potential to inform theory and practice in that area.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140533251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study examines the effectiveness of collaborative platforms in supporting local collaborations for natural resource management. It also explores how governmental and non-governmental lead organizations adopt differing collaborative implementation approaches and how these variations influence outcomes. Utilizing a natural experiment and a difference-in-differences estimator, we evaluate if the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities program functions as a collaborative platform to foster local-level Clean Cities Collaborations across the U.S., thereby improving air quality. Our findings suggest that Clean Cities Collaborations have a substantial and enduring impact on reducing air pollution. A series of subgroup analyses suggests that these environmental improvements are most noticeable in collaborations led by nonprofits and regional government councils, rather than those directed by state and local governments. A complementary content analysis provides exploratory evidence that issue definition, collaborative group structure, and inclusive decision-making processes are crucial managerial factors that contribute to the environmental improvements. These insights pave the way for more effective management of collaborative governance on a larger scale.
{"title":"All Hands on Deck: The Role of Collaborative Platforms and Lead Organizations in Achieving Environmental Goals","authors":"Heewon Lee, Yixin Liu","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae006","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the effectiveness of collaborative platforms in supporting local collaborations for natural resource management. It also explores how governmental and non-governmental lead organizations adopt differing collaborative implementation approaches and how these variations influence outcomes. Utilizing a natural experiment and a difference-in-differences estimator, we evaluate if the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities program functions as a collaborative platform to foster local-level Clean Cities Collaborations across the U.S., thereby improving air quality. Our findings suggest that Clean Cities Collaborations have a substantial and enduring impact on reducing air pollution. A series of subgroup analyses suggests that these environmental improvements are most noticeable in collaborations led by nonprofits and regional government councils, rather than those directed by state and local governments. A complementary content analysis provides exploratory evidence that issue definition, collaborative group structure, and inclusive decision-making processes are crucial managerial factors that contribute to the environmental improvements. These insights pave the way for more effective management of collaborative governance on a larger scale.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140064327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The formal engagement of diverse stakeholder groups in policy design and implementation has become a mainstay governance strategy. While much has been learned about collaborative governance arrangements in terms of their structure, processes, and participant dynamics, one particularly salient dynamic has been relatively underexplored: the factors contributing to sustained participation in collaborative venues. Public administration and policy have developed a variety of conceptual theories which draw attention to interpersonal interactions and the ability of stakeholders to garner political wins as important contributing factors to sustained participation. In this paper, we test four theoretically rooted hypotheses to investigate stakeholder attendance in the collaborative governance case of an environmental justice council. We analyze council meeting minute data using computational text analysis tools and a Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model to assess: (i) conflict and concord, measured in terms of repeated (dis)agreement with others; and (ii) interest advancement, or the extent to which a stakeholder makes positive, neutral, and negative comments towards topics which become the council’s annual objectives in relation to an individual’s attendance. Our interpersonal interaction results show increased positive relationships are associated with increased attendance, and increased negative relationships are associated with decreased attendance, but, for both cases, only when interactions are repeated and not one-off. Our interest advancement results show: (1) an increase in supported annual objectives is associated with decreases in attendance for an individual stakeholder, but (2) increased oppositional and neutral annual topics are associated with a greater likelihood of attendance. This paper contributes to existing scholarship on collaborative governance by offering additional insights into individual factors associated with sustained engagement in the collaborative venue. Furthermore, the paper offers a generalizable methodological approach for analyzing these dynamics drawing on computational text analysis of meeting minute data.
{"title":"Assessing Drivers of Sustained Engagement in Collaborative Governance Arrangements","authors":"Graham Ambrose, Saba Siddiki","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae005","url":null,"abstract":"The formal engagement of diverse stakeholder groups in policy design and implementation has become a mainstay governance strategy. While much has been learned about collaborative governance arrangements in terms of their structure, processes, and participant dynamics, one particularly salient dynamic has been relatively underexplored: the factors contributing to sustained participation in collaborative venues. Public administration and policy have developed a variety of conceptual theories which draw attention to interpersonal interactions and the ability of stakeholders to garner political wins as important contributing factors to sustained participation. In this paper, we test four theoretically rooted hypotheses to investigate stakeholder attendance in the collaborative governance case of an environmental justice council. We analyze council meeting minute data using computational text analysis tools and a Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model to assess: (i) conflict and concord, measured in terms of repeated (dis)agreement with others; and (ii) interest advancement, or the extent to which a stakeholder makes positive, neutral, and negative comments towards topics which become the council’s annual objectives in relation to an individual’s attendance. Our interpersonal interaction results show increased positive relationships are associated with increased attendance, and increased negative relationships are associated with decreased attendance, but, for both cases, only when interactions are repeated and not one-off. Our interest advancement results show: (1) an increase in supported annual objectives is associated with decreases in attendance for an individual stakeholder, but (2) increased oppositional and neutral annual topics are associated with a greater likelihood of attendance. This paper contributes to existing scholarship on collaborative governance by offering additional insights into individual factors associated with sustained engagement in the collaborative venue. Furthermore, the paper offers a generalizable methodological approach for analyzing these dynamics drawing on computational text analysis of meeting minute data.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"189 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139901786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Public trust and civic predisposition are cornerstones of well-functioning democratic societies, and burdensome citizen-state encounters may undermine positive views of government, especially for racially minoritized clientele. Leveraging insights from policy feedback theory, we argue that administrative burden has the potential to undermine trust in government and civic predisposition through two mechanisms: 1) interpretive effects: burdensome experiences that induce negative emotional responses and 2) resource effects: experiences of losing access to public benefits. In our OLS regression analysis of survey data from applicants for a means-tested public benefit program in the U.S. (n=2,250), we find that clients who lost access to benefits were significantly less likely to trust government, and these findings were driven by racially minoritized clients rather than White clients. Our findings demonstrate that experiences of administrative burden that result in the loss of public benefits may result in racialized policy feedback, by disproportionately reducing trust in government and civic predisposition for racially minoritized clientele.
{"title":"Does Administrative Burden Create Racialized Policy Feedback? How Losing Access to Public Benefits Impacts Beliefs about Government","authors":"Elizabeth Bell, James E Wright II, Jeongmin Oh","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae004","url":null,"abstract":"Public trust and civic predisposition are cornerstones of well-functioning democratic societies, and burdensome citizen-state encounters may undermine positive views of government, especially for racially minoritized clientele. Leveraging insights from policy feedback theory, we argue that administrative burden has the potential to undermine trust in government and civic predisposition through two mechanisms: 1) interpretive effects: burdensome experiences that induce negative emotional responses and 2) resource effects: experiences of losing access to public benefits. In our OLS regression analysis of survey data from applicants for a means-tested public benefit program in the U.S. (n=2,250), we find that clients who lost access to benefits were significantly less likely to trust government, and these findings were driven by racially minoritized clients rather than White clients. Our findings demonstrate that experiences of administrative burden that result in the loss of public benefits may result in racialized policy feedback, by disproportionately reducing trust in government and civic predisposition for racially minoritized clientele.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139750401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While many public organizations have made notable strides to improve the representation of women at all ranks, women remain severely underrepresented in law enforcement organizations. Research shows that a critical barrier to women’s integration into law enforcement is the common perception among policemen that women are unsuited for police work. This study draws on Social Dominance Theory to provide a better understanding of the values and beliefs underlying policemen’s negative perceptions. Using survey data and Ordinary Least Squares Regression analyses, we examine the association between Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), an individual difference variable that captures preference for group-based social hierarchy, and officers’ assessment of women’s suitability for law enforcement. In line with existing evidence, our analyses show that compared to policewomen, policemen provide a significantly more negative assessment of women’s suitability for law enforcement. We also find that higher SDO officers report more negative assessments of women in law enforcement, and officers’ diversity value partially mediates this relationship. These novel findings suggest that officers who desire to protect existing power dynamics are more likely to resist organizational diversity efforts and have more negative views about women’s suitability for law enforcement.
{"title":"Preference for Group-based Social Hierarchy and the Reluctance to Accept Women as Equals in Law Enforcement","authors":"Jill A Davis, Shahidul Hassan","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae003","url":null,"abstract":"While many public organizations have made notable strides to improve the representation of women at all ranks, women remain severely underrepresented in law enforcement organizations. Research shows that a critical barrier to women’s integration into law enforcement is the common perception among policemen that women are unsuited for police work. This study draws on Social Dominance Theory to provide a better understanding of the values and beliefs underlying policemen’s negative perceptions. Using survey data and Ordinary Least Squares Regression analyses, we examine the association between Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), an individual difference variable that captures preference for group-based social hierarchy, and officers’ assessment of women’s suitability for law enforcement. In line with existing evidence, our analyses show that compared to policewomen, policemen provide a significantly more negative assessment of women’s suitability for law enforcement. We also find that higher SDO officers report more negative assessments of women in law enforcement, and officers’ diversity value partially mediates this relationship. These novel findings suggest that officers who desire to protect existing power dynamics are more likely to resist organizational diversity efforts and have more negative views about women’s suitability for law enforcement.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":"240 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139750403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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