The Digital Citizen: The Impact of Technology on Public Participation and Government Responsiveness Restricted; Files Only
Schiff, Kaylyn (Summer 2022)
Published
Abstract
Accountability and responsiveness require citizens to monitor representatives' actions and representatives to know citizens' preferences. However, low participation rates and limited responsiveness by public officials often characterize citizen-government interactions. What does technological development, specifically the recent proliferation of information and communications technology (ICT) for citizen-government contact, imply for these longstanding features of politics? I address this question through three papers considering three potential transformative impacts of technology on politics: changes to 1) the information available to government on citizen preferences and needs, 2) the information available to citizens about government performance, and 3) the channels through which citizens and government can communicate. Moreover, the applications that I study highlight three specific ways that online communication differs from traditional offline communication: 1) publicity, 2) ease of access and use, and 3) speed. The first paper shows that new digital platforms, specifically mobile apps to submit service requests, can facilitate collaborative political participation that elevates the publicity of certain important issues, provides additional information to government about citizen priorities, and improves government responsiveness as a result. The second paper reveals that when information about government performance is more accessible and intelligible to members of the public through online platforms, more citizens may participate in elections, public meetings, and other forums to hold elected officials accountable. Finally, the last paper considers how policymakers make assumptions about messenger identity and the perceived costliness of sending messages through online and offline channels, finding evidence of a preference for interacting with supporters rather than engaging with more costly channels. I complement these papers with a discussion of the equity implications of technology for democracy. Altogether, this work explores the promises and pitfalls of technology as a driver of democratic participation, representation, and responsiveness.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 ICT for Citizen-Government Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The Political Impacts of New Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Online versus Offline Citizen-Government Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Road Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 Does Citizen Collaboration Impact Government Service Provision? Evidence from SeeClickFix Requests 9
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Citizen Collaboration and Participation in Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.1 Coproduction and Citizen Contacting of Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.2 The Importance of Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 A Theory of Citizen Collaboration as a Signal for Bureaucrats . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3.1 Proposed Mechanisms and Conceptual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.2 Evidence from Interviews of City Administrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Data on Service Request Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.1 Background on SeeClickFix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.2 The Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.5 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5.1 Survival Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.5.2 Matching Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5.3 Difference-in-Differences Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.6 Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3 Does Online Performance Information Affect Political Participation? Evidence from School Ratings 40
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.2 The Political Impacts of Performance Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.2.1 Performance Information and Citizen Responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.2.2 School Performance Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3 The Benefits of Online Performance Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3.1 Government-Provided versus NGO-Provided Performance Information . . . . 48
3.3.2 School Performance Example: California State Reports versus GreatSchools . 49
3.3.3 Impacts of New Performance Information Separate from Ratings Levels . . . 50
3.3.4 Heterogeneous Impacts of Performance Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.3.5 Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.4 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.1 GreatSchools Ratings Rollout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.4.2 School Board Meeting Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.4.3 School Board Election Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.4.4 Tax and Bond Referenda Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.5 Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.5.1 School Board Meeting Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.5.2 Election and Referenda Turnout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.6 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.6.1 School Board Meeting Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.6.2 School Board Election Turnout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.6.3 Tax and Bond Referenda Turnout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.6.4 Sensitivity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4 Policymaker Perceptions of Messenger Identity and Responsiveness to Citizen Communication 74
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.2 Messenger Identity and Responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.3 Surveys of Policymakers and the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3.1 Survey of Local Policymakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3.2 Survey of the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.4 Methods and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.4.1 How do policymakers respond to messages through different channels? . . . . 87
4.4.2 How do policymakers perceive that citizens communicate with them? . . . . . 89
4.4.3 Do perceptions of messenger identity drive responsiveness? . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.4.4 Are policymakers’ perceptions of citizen political communication accurate? . 95
4.5 Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5 Conclusion 103
5.1 The Equity Implications of Technology for Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
References 107
A Appendix for Does Citizen Collaboration Impact Government Service Provision? Evidence from SeeClickFix Requests 120
A.1 Additional Information on the Request Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
A.2 Main Results with Rating Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
A.3 Survival Analysis Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
A.3.1 With City Fixed Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
A.3.2 Shared Frailty by City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
A.3.3 City Random Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
A.4 Additional Information on the Matching Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
A.4.1 Theory-Driven Selection of Covariates for Propensity Score Matching . . . . 128
A.4.2 LASSO Regression for Propensity Score Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
A.4.3 Genetic Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
A.5 Difference-in-Differences Analysis Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
A.5.1 Descriptive Information on Collaboration in Oakland and San Francisco . . . 133
A.5.2 Alternative Specifications of the Collaboration Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
A.5.3 Alternative Specifications of the Outcome Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
A.5.4 Robustness to Inclusion of Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
A.6 Are Requests Completed Faster for Superusers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
A.7 When and Where Does Collaboration Occur? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
B Appendix for Does Online Performance Information Affect Political Participation? Evidence from School Ratings 147
B.1 GreatSchools Ratings versus State Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
B.2 Descriptive Plots of Outcome Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
B.3 Robustness Check: Alternative Specification for Unit-Specific Time Trends . . . . . 152
B.4 Robustness Check: Alternative Coding for Media Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
C Appendix for Policymaker Perceptions of Messenger Identity and Responsiveness to Citizen Communication 155
C.1 Survey of Local Policymakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
C.2 Survey of the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
C.3 Responsiveness by Legislator and Constituent Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
C.4 Robustness Checks for Supporter Use Ranking Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
C.5 Representativeness of Survey of the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
C.6 Additional Results from Survey of the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
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