Democracies are typically considered more legitimate than other types of regimes because they allow the citizens to participate in the policy decision-making process. Others argue that the policy output matters most, and citizen influence plays a lesser role. This study presents two survey experiments on the micro foundations of these two sources of political legitimacy, thus contributing to an emerging literature that experimentally investigates the effects of democratic procedures in small-scale settings. Respondents who saw the decision going in their favour found the decision much more acceptable than the respondents who preferred another outcome. Conversely, decision-making influence generally did not serve as a legitimising factor among the respondents. This result supports the argument that citizens prefer a stealth democracy where they are minimally involved in democratic decision-making processes. Keywordsinput legitimacy, output legitimacy, survey experiment, stealth democracy Accepted: 11 July 2016 This study presents two survey experiments that aim to uncover the effect of perceived decision-making influence on receptivity to specific decisions. They also measure to what degree the favourability of the outcome matters to the evaluation of the decisions. As such, the study contributes to an emerging political science literature on experiments with decision-making processes and their impact on legitimacy beliefs (Esaiasson et al., 2012(Esaiasson et al., , 2016Persson et al., 2013). These micro-level empirical studies take a novel and complementary approach in examining a central question in studies of democracy that tend to

We examine how descriptive representation, formal representation, and responsiveness affect the legitimacy of political decisions: Who are the representatives, how are they selected, what is the outcome of the decisionmaking process, and to what extent do these three aspects matter for decision acceptance among the citizens? We examine this from the citizens' perspective, and ask whether decisions are perceived as more legitimate when they are made by groups that reflect society in certain characteristics and chosen according to certain selection procedures. In a Norwegian survey experiment, we find that people are more willing to accept a decision when it is made by a group of people like them, and who are assigned as decision makers based on their expertise. Descriptive representation also serves as a cushion for unfavorable decisions. Moreover, when asked, the traditionally less advantaged groups tend to value descriptive representation more than other citizens.

No abstract

This conjoint study investigates the type of mandate a referendum confers in the political decision-making process. While a majority of citizens in general believe that