Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Impact of Expectations of Legislative Processes on Legitimacy Perceptions

大多数情况下，代表是有效的。大多数时候，公众舆论推动政策产出和变化。然而，许多公民认为，不能信任代表对公众的需求和利益作出反应。本文考察了人们对立法程序期望的来源和内容，以帮助调和这一明显的矛盾。公众舆论理论由此发展；这一理论是基于越来越多的证据，即人们对决策当局合法性的总体评价受到他们对程序公平性的看法的影响。今天，大多数美国人都不相信立法程序是公正的。相反，许多公民认为，这个过程容易受到利益集团和商业组织的压力，因此，它造成了人们希望政府如何运作和他们认为政府如何运作之间的差异。尽管这是故事的一部分，但这种不一致本身并不能完全解释为什么这么多美国人对立法程序的合法性持怀疑态度。我认为，对政府的普遍谴责背后是市场预期与政治预期之间日益加剧的冲突。在这一理论中，人们越来越期望从立法程序中获得与市场所提供的同等程度的效率、问责制和机会平等，尽管政府的多元机制无法与这些经济理想相匹配。因此，本项目的目标是证明，对政府的普遍反感是公民对立法程序的期望与多元民主的制度要求之间的根本不一致。本文通过两种方式进行了验证。首先，我使用了一项调查，其中包括McClosky和Zaller的美国人资本主义和民主价值观的观点和价值观量表中的问题。该调查还包括来自国家选举研究的标准横截面的项目以及我自己设计的问题。最后，通过一个原始实验对泰勒程序公正理论所衍生的心理机制进行了分离。

Representation, for the most part, works. Public opinion drives policy output and change most of the time. Yet, many citizens believe that representatives cannot be trusted to respond to public needs and interests. This dissertation examines the sources and content of people's expectations of the legislative process to help reconcile this apparent contradiction. A theory of public opinion is developed; this theory is based on mounting evidence that people's overall evaluations of the legitimacy of decision-making authorities are influenced by their perceptions of procedural fairness. Most American today do not believe that the legislative process is impartial. Instead, many citizens believe that the process is susceptible to pressure from interest groups and business organizations, and, thus, it creates a discrepancy between how people want government towork and how they perceive that it does work. Although it is part of the story, this discordance by itself cannot explain fully why so many Americans are skeptical of the legitimacy of the legislative process. I content that underlying widespread condemnation of government is an increasing conflict of expectations of the market with those of poliitics. People, in this theory, increasingly expect from the legislative process the same degree of efficiency, accountability, and equality of opportunity that the perceive the market offers, even though pluralist mechanisms of government cannot match these economic ideals. Thus, the goal of this project is to demonstrate that underlying broad antipathy toward government is a fundamental inconsistency between citizens' expectations of legislative processes and what is possible within the institutional requirements of a pluralist democracy. This thesis is tested in two ways. First, I use a survey that includes questions from McClosky and Zaller's Opinions and Values of Americans Scale for Capitalist and Democratic Values. The survey also includes items from the standard cross-sections of the National Election Studies as well as questions of my own design. Finally, the postulated psychological mechanism derived from Tyler's work on procedural justice is isolated using an original experiment.