What Can Performance Information Do to Legislator? : A Small group Budget Decision Making Experiment with Swiss State Legislators
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2014-09-08
Author(s)
Abstract
Existing studies on the influence of performance information on budgeting decisions are limited and have produced contradictory findings. This paper argues that most previous work has somewhat problematically focused on self-reported use of performance information rather than on the legislative context into which performance information is introduced. This study offers a framework that links performance information to legislators' budgeting decisions. I argue that the impact will differ depending on whether performance information is reflected in the budget proposal, whether the allocation issue concerns a politically difficult value tradeoff for the decision-maker, and whether the implications of the performance information fall into a receptive partisan mind. This paper studies these aspects by manipulating the first two of these factors in an experimental setting involving budgetary decision-making by 57 actual legislators. The control groups consist of 65 undergraduate students. The results show that the introduction of performance information into the legislators' deliberation process leads to stronger deviations from the status quo allo-cation. I argue that this difference occurs because performance information highlights more clearly the expected consequences of budgetary changes and allows for more pronounced reactions. This paper concludes that more informed decisions based on good performance budgets might also create a situation in which it is more difficult for legislators to compromise because individual positions become more polarized.
Funding(s)
Language
English
Keywords
Budgeting
Legislators
Performance Information
Influence
Experiment
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Event Title
36th EGPA European Group of Public Administration Annual Conference
Event Location
Speyer
Event Date
08.-12.09.2014
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
234447
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
Demaj_2014_What Can Performance Information Do to Legislators.pdf
Size
834.74 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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