The perceived legitimacy of regulatory agencies: the effects of political independence, reputation, and warmth

This study investigates how the independence, reputation, and communicative warmth of regulatory agencies effect citizens’ perceptions of agency legitimacy. Grounded in public administration scholarship, specifically delving into bureaucratic politics, bureaucratic reputation arguments, and insights from social psychology, our argument unfolds across three key hypotheses. Firstly, we posit that when regulatory agencies signal independence from political stakeholders, it enhances regulatory agency legitimacy in the eyes of citizens (Hypothesis 1). Building on bureaucratic reputation scholarship, our second argument contends that robust signals of competence and transactional authority significantly elevate citizens’ legitimacy perceptions (Hypothesis 2). In a theoretical leap, we introduce the notion that the incorporation of warmth signals in regulatory communications by regulatory agencies leads to increased legitimacy perceptions (Hypothesis 3). We conducted a between-subject survey experiment (pre-registered) manipulating the independence from political stakeholders, reputation, and warmth of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), specifically focusing on its recent scientific opinion on aged meat safety. Data (N = 1200) were collected from quota-based samples in Slovakia and Finland, countries with varying trust gaps between national and EU institutions.