Processing legitimacy: Policy actors’ perceptions of democratic and epistemic reasoning of citizen voice in local government policy development

Citizen voice in decision-making is a foundation of legitimate public policy. Policy actors’ perceptions of the legitimacy of policy development can influence the uptake of citizen voice in policy processes. Processing legitimacy includes using citizen voice, highlighting a tension between its democratic legitimacy and epistemic merit. The problem we analyse is how policy actors’ perceptions of legitimacy may influence uptake of citizen voice. This interpretive study offers empirical evidence on policy actors’ perceptions of citizen voice, and what this implies for how we might think about the legitimacy of policy development. Policy actors emphasised democratic contributions over epistemic merit. Although they found citizen voice important, they also indicated it had limited informational value, and placed little weight on its contribution in policy development. Questions remain about how policy actors can assess public acceptance of a policy when perceptions of the epistemic merit of citizen voice are low.