Multisector Governance and Public Support for Transportation Investments

• In Event: Conflict and Collaboration in Federal Systems

Abstract

Most Americans lack trust in government at all levels to solve social problems and serve the public interest (Pew 2017). In response, policymakers in many sectors are increasingly turning to multisector governance arrangements to manage and allocate public resources. Multisector governance involves deliberately and explicitly including non-governmental actors - business, non-profits, foundations, community-based organizations, regular citizens - into the public decision-making process (Agranoff and McGuire 2004). Many believe that increasing the number and diversity of decision-maker perspectives improves representation and increases public legitimacy (Ansell and Gash 2007; Emerson et al. 2012; Thomson and Perry 2006). We seek to investigate empirically how the public views these efforts and whether they view multisector governance efforts to be more legitimate than pure public/governmental decision-making. We conduct a series of survey experiments with a national random sample of adults in which online respondents are presented with one of two vignettes that describe the process by which new regional transportation policies are being developed. One vignette introduces a broad-based spending package to fund a bundle of road/highway, public transit, and non-motorized transportation improvements (i.e., a classic distributive program). The second vignette covers regulation of autonomous vehicles (i.e., a new regulatory policy). In each case, respondents are given one of four treatments describing the decision-makers: government only, government plus business, government plus environmental, and government plus community based organizations. They are then asked a series of questions about whether they believe the process and outcome will be fair, and what kinds of interests will likely benefit. These data will allow us to test hypotheses about feelings of trust and public views of legitimacy in the political decision-making process.

Authors

• Iris Hui, Stanford University

• Bruce E. Cain, Stanford University

• Elisabeth R. Gerber, University of Michigan