Online Citizen Participation and its Effects on Legitimacy: Evidence from a Comparative Case Study in Three German Municipalities

(Panel 7 - Political Participation and Deliberation Online – Contributions from Social Computing) The notion of legitimacy is central for any form of government: If it does not want to resort to coercion it has to rely on the subjective beliefs of its citizens that the government and its decisions are legitimate, i.e. that they are worthy of acceptance because they are in line with individual perceptions of how a political system should work. However, it is exactly these legitimacy beliefs that are in decline as for example indicted by declining trust in some key institutions and its representatives. One of the strategies of public stakeholders in representative democracies has been to increasingly involve citizens in political decision-making processes, not least responding to an outspoken demand of the public. Increasingly, such forms of citizen participation are carried out via online platforms. However, empirical evidence of whether such involvement, in particular via online means, actually contributes to greater legitimacy beliefs of the public is scarce. This paper addresses this gap with a particular focus on local online participation and its effects on legitimacy beliefs. It reports on the results of a unique comparative research effort in which three almost identical instances of online participation are systematically evaluated. To this end, in 2017 the authors conducted map-based online dialogues in close collaboration with the city councils in the three municipalities of Bonn, Moers and Ehrenfeld (district of Cologne) in which citizens made about 3.200 suggestions along with 2.200 comments on how to improve the situation for cyclists in the respective cities. To assess how these participatory processes may or may not have impacted on i) the citizens assessment of local policy and ii) the stakeholders responsible for it as well as iii) on their overall satisfaction with the way democracy works in their city and their country, this study can draw on empirical evidence derived from representative surveys (partly in panel design) in the three municipalities involved. In addition, users of the platforms are surveyed and the data generated by the platform itself is analyzed. While the data from the first wave of the panel survey of 1.600 people from a random sample of the general population in Bonn is already available, the post-process surveys will take place in spring 2018 with results available by May 2018. This paper will report on the first results of this research. In contrast to previous studies who are mainly based on individual case studies and are usually focused on those who actually take part in such opportunities, this paper can i) compare three basically identical instances of political participation online in comparable contexts (three different municipalities), ii) compare active participants on those online platforms with those who have not taken part or did not even know about the processes and iii) track the development of public legitimacy beliefs over time (i.e. before and after the participation process).