Does public participation foster stakeholder support for policy proposals? Evidence from the European Union
研究了欧盟委员会2017-2021年315项政策提案中，公众参与如何通过程序公平影响利益相关者的支持，发现议程设置中的利益代表和开放式参与形式能提升支持，而决策说明中的信息透明仅在特定政策领域有效。
Abstract We examine whether and how public participation in policymaking contributes towards fostering stakeholder support for policy proposals formulated in the bureaucratic arena. We explain how key markers of procedural fairness describing both the participation process and policymakers' presentations of it during the decision justification stage co‐vary systematically with (higher) levels of stakeholder support. We test our argument on an original dataset with 8902 stakeholder evaluative statements on 315 policy proposals formulated by the European Commission during 2017–2021. Participatory processes characterized by a robust representation of a stakeholder's interests during the agenda‐setting stage and consisting of more open‐format participation venues are systematically and positively associated with higher stakeholder support. Enhanced information provision and transparency about the public participation process on behalf of policymakers during decision justification increases stakeholder support, but the co‐variation is statistically significant only when accounting for policy area type. We find no systematic co‐variation between how much attention policymakers pay to discuss the policy inputs coming from participatory processes as part of their decision justification and levels of stakeholder support for policy proposals. Our study contributes to key debates in the research on participatory governance, bureaucratic policymaking, and procedural fairness.