Participatory process, anti-elitism, and legitimacy beliefs in local policy-making: evidence from a survey experiment in South Korea

Abstract As many representative democracies face growing challenges of public dissatisfaction and legitimacy crises, understanding how to enhance citizens’ support for political decision-making processes becomes increasingly crucial. While existing research suggests that public participation can strengthen democratic legitimacy in well-established Western democracies, relatively little attention has been paid to whether the positive effects of public participation also hold in young democracies like South Korea. Moreover, many studies on the effect of public participation do not assume that its effects should be varied across different segments of the population. Through a survey experiment with 2083 adults in South Korea, we examine how participatory processes enhance citizens’ legitimacy beliefs at the local level. We find that a decision-making process including public participation produces a higher legitimacy belief than decision-making process without public participation. We also find that the effect of a participatory policy-making process on legitimacy beliefs is higher among citizens with a stronger anti-elite attitude. Our study not only extends previous research beyond Western democracies but also reveals how public participation might serve as a crucial tool for rebuilding democratic legitimacy among disaffected citizens, particularly in young democracies where citizen engagement remains underdeveloped.