Helping citizens to lobby themselves. Experimental evidence on the effects of citizen lobby engagement on internal efficacy and political support

Abstract

Ideally, interest groups form a link between citizens and politics. However, this link is often flawed in practice. Many citizens also feel that the average citizen is not heard and that special interests exert undue influence on policymaking. One proposal to address this problem is the stimulation of so-called citizen lobby: Ordinary citizens can use lobbying strategies to achieve influence on decision-makers. This can benefit both policymakers and citizens as it can empower citizens to make their voices heard and it can help policymakers to build perceived legitimacy among citizens that are dissatisfied with existing decision-making processes. Formal channels for citizen lobby often exist but remain underused. However, what happens when governments actively engage with citizen lobby? We conduct two survey experiments in the Netherlands (N=1,218) and show that engagement with citizen lobby has no systematic effect on internal political efficacy but has robust positive effects on political support.