Institutionally-induced attribution errors: Their Composition and Impact on Citizen Satisfaction with Local Government Services

David Lowery, William E. Lyons, Ruth Hoogland Dehoog

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Citizens can make mistakes in evaluating the quality of public services by misattributing responsibility for service provision. Both the traditional reform approach and the public choice theory suggest that such errors are systematically influenced by the structure of political institutions, albeit in nearly the opposite manner. To explore these competing hypotheses, this study develops a typology of evaluative errors which citizens might make and a method for decomposing evaluations into their “true” and “biased” elements, which are combined with survey data in a comparison group research design to assess the impact of metropolitan fragmentation/consolidation on citizen evaluations of government.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)169-196
Number of pages28
JournalAmerican Politics Research
Volume18
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 1990

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Sociology and Political Science

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