15:30 - 17:45
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Ana Weeks
Discussant/s:
Christopher Wratil
Meeting Room O

Ana Weeks, Hilde Coffé, Sparsha Saha
Quotas or Parity? How the Framing of Positive Action Measures Affects Public Legitimacy

Anne Rasmussen, Stefanie Reher
(When) Does Citizen Engagement affect the Legitimacy of Policy-making? Evidence from a conjoint experiment

Aliza Forman-Rabinovici, Itai Beeri
Connecting descriptive representation in elected bodies to citizen satisfaction with public services

Jae-Hee Jung
Voters' Preferences for Moral Representation

Zachary Greene, Lauren Toner
Observing more, but doing less? Evaluating voters’ attitudes towards intra-party deliberation using a conjoint survey experiment.
Connecting descriptive representation in elected bodies to citizen satisfaction with public services
Aliza Forman-Rabinovici 1, Itai Beeri 2
1 Tel Aviv University
2 University of Haifa

Is there a connection between descriptive representation in elected bodies and citizen satisfaction with public services? Recent studies have begun to observe less visible outcomes of diverse representation. Though both legislative representation and citizen satisfaction literature engage with similar themes such as trust and ingroup advocacy, the two topics have yet to be connected. This paper addresses this gap and posits that descriptive representation in the legislature can be key for improving citizen satisfaction with public services. We apply a unique framework that offers both substantive and symbolic rationales for why there might be a connection between electoral representation and citizen's perception of quality of administrative services. Applying data from an original survey of residents of Haifa, Israel, and using Hayes processing models, we test the relationship between tangible and perceived levels of descriptive representation, trust, and perceptions of legitimacy with citizen satisfaction with public services. Initial findings show that while tangible descriptive representation in elected bodies is important, perceptions of descriptive representation, mediated through citizen trust and level of political alienation, is an even more significant determinant of citizen satisfaction with public services. These findings provide insights into the extensive impact and importance of representation, as well as how we can improve the citizen experience of underrepresented groups.