Legislative Procedures and Perceptions of Legitimacy

• In Event: Rules of Legislative Procedure in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Democratic backsliding appears to be rife around the world, impacting emerging and established democracies alike. This phenomenon has justifiably captured the attention of political science. At a time when democratic backsliding is of such high concern to the discipline, the fact that the highest disapproval is reserved for the branch with the closest connection to the voting citizen necessitates further development of theories on how institutions within democracies develop their legitimacy.

I advance a theory that approval of legislatures is determined by perceptions of legitimacy, which are in turn dictated by citizen assessment of procedural fairness of the legislative process. While this procedural fairness framework is often applied to criminal justice systems or bureaucracies, this framework has not been tested as the determinant of legitimacy of national legislatures. Using a most similar systems analysis for my case selection, I analyze the legislative rules of Indonesia and the Philippines, two populous third-wave democracies with similar macro-institutions of presidential government. I identify the presence or absence of specific provisions in the legislative rules of both countries that, based on my prior professional experience as legislative counsel, render the legislative process open, accessible and predictable to citizens offering input on legislation. I then compare those findings with survey data on approval of the legislature in each country. I find that Indonesia, the legislature with lower approval between the two, has rules of legislative procedure that obscure legislative proceedings from the public, while the Philippines has legislative rules that provide greater public access to the legislative process. I further perform a qualitative analysis of publicly available media sources demonstrating public awareness of legislative processes when forming their opinions of the legislature. I conclude that the best explanation for variation in perception of legitimacy between the two cases is the internal procedures of the legislatures themselves.

This paper would fit well on a panel on legislatures in developing countries, or the comparative politics of developing areas more broadly.

Author

• Megan Cox, University of California - Los Angeles