Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-18T08:21:02.957Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Public Demand

from Part II - Transparency and The Mass Public

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2022

Justin H. Kirkland
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Jeffrey J. Harden
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access

Summary

Given the contrast between political elites’ resistance to transparency and reformers’ demand for it, the results in Chapters 4 and 5 present an unusual puzzle. Both sides believe transparency should have an effect, and yet we find that it does not. We begin to address that puzzle in Chapter 6 with an assessment of citizens’ reactions to open governance. Our data sources for this analysis are the 2018 and 2020 CES, which asked survey questions of a representative sample of about 60,000 American adults in each year. We administered three experiments and two standard survey questions to subsets of 1,000 respondents each in these surveys. We find that Americans do, in fact, favor a transparent legislature to a closed one, although the actual policies the legislature implements can strengthen or weaken that preference. Additionally, this pattern is fairly widespread across the population rather than concentrated only in a specific group of citizens with certain political or demographic traits. In short, there is support for the idea that, when it is presented to them, the public responds positively to the opportunity to serve as the principal in our theoretical framework.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Illusion of Accountability
Transparency and Representation in American Legislatures
, pp. 165 - 195
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×