Citizen Preferences on Discretion in the Age of Democratic Backsliding and the Rise of Populism

Discretion is a fundamental aspect of democratic governance. While research on bureaucratic discretion has largely focused on the design of laws as a mechanism of political control, much less is known about how citizens perceive discretion and which actors they prefer to hold it. This question has become recently important in an era of populism and democratic backsliding, as the role and legitimacy of bureaucratic actors are highly contested. This study examines citizen support for different configurations of discretion in policy-making, with particular attention to how preferences vary across policy domains, oversight mechanisms, and illiberal political contexts. We conduct a vignette survey experiment with a representative sample of UK citizens (n = 2,000). Respondents evaluate policy designs that vary by actor (minister vs. bureaucrat), domain (immigration vs. food safety), judicial review, and the presence of an illiberal context. This design allows us to identify how institutional features, such as who holds decision-making power and the extent of checks on that power, interact with polarized policy domains and illiberal environments to shape public support for discretion. In doing so, we contribute to the literature on discretion by demonstrating how democratic backsliding and polarization structure citizen preferences over the allocation of regulatory authority.