Parliament, People, or Technocrats? Explaining Mass Public Preferences on Delegation of Policy-Making Authority

While delegation of policy-making authority from citizens to legislature and government is the most defining characteristic of representative democracy, public demand for delegating such authority away from legislature/government to technocrats or back to citizens appears to have increased. Drawing on spatial models of voting we argue that the distance between individuals’ ideal policy point, the status quo, experts’ policy position, and the aggregated societal policy preference can explain whether individuals want to delegate decision-making power away from parliament and, if so, to whom. This relationship is expected to be stronger when the policy issue dimension is salient for the respective individuals. We test this theory using survey experiments in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. The empirical analysis supports our theoretical arguments. Our research contributes to better understanding citizens’ support for representative democracy and variation in preferences for delegating policymaking authority away from parliament.