Revisiting Responsibility Attribution within Multilevel Governments: The Role of Information

Ana Herrero-Alcalde ^[1] ; José Manuel Tránchez Martín ^[1] ; María Eugenia Goenaga Ruiz de Zuazu ^[2]
1. [1] Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
  
  Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
  
  Madrid, España
2. [2] Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  
  Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  
  Madrid, España
Localización: Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, ISSN 0210-1173, Nº 226, 2018, págs. 37-58
Idioma: inglés
Enlaces
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Resumen
- Recent research has shown that citizens living in decentralized countries struggle to identify which level of government is designing and implementing public policies, thus hindering the due accountability process of democracy. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of citizens´ responsibility attribution by analyzing the Spanish case. A novel methodological approach is used by separately analyzing those citizens who fail to identify the competent level of government and those who did not even give an answer. Besides, two novel hypotheses are tested regarding the process by which information is transmitted to and absorbed by citizens: the impact of regional media and the territorial group bias. After confirming that the methodological strategy is correct, we find strong evidence that the existence of regional media helps responsibility attribution, thus fostering accountability; while co-official languages, used as a proxy of a group bias, hamper the process by which citizens identify the competent level of government