Voice, Accountability, and Alternative Policy Venues: An Analysis of Citizen Complaints Against Local Government to the National Ombudsman

Citizens’ complaints are understood as a way to demonstrate dissatisfaction with governments’ decisions (for acting or non-acting in certain areas) or public services that directly or indirectly affect the population’s quality of life. Some studies have been done to evaluate the factors which affect citizen complaints and this paper wants to contribute to this discussion by analyzing the Portuguese local context. Citizen complaints against local governments might be mediated through other institutions as a consequence of the existence of alternative tools to express dissatisfaction. Two arguments concur to this causal mechanism. First, following Schattschneider’s claim, losers in one particular policy venue may seek to expand the scope of conflict in the hopes of winning in a different venue (Schattschneider, 1960). The presence of additional venues of political representation provides alternative channels to accommodate citizen dissatisfaction with municipal governments. Second, in the context of Portugal, the limited fiscal autonomy of Portuguese municipalities and the strong local identities and attachment to place (loyalty), produce less credible exit alternatives therefore placing significant pressure on the voice mechanism (Tiebout, 1956; Hirschmann, 1970). Accordingly, citizens with more policy venues to voice discontent are less likely to resort to national level institutions to express dissatisfaction. This research intends to test these hypotheses and study the determinants of citizen complaints to the national ombudsman in Portugal regarding their dissatisfaction with local governments. We collected data on all the citizen complaints submitted to the national ombudsman between 2012 and 2015 filed against each municipal government in a total of 2127 complaints. To analyze the data we employed negative binomial regression models to test our hypotheses. Findings support the key hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework: the existence of alternative policy venues to express dissatisfaction with the local government, such as the presence of sub-municipal governments and the existence of a regional government is associated with a diminished number of complaints. References: Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schattschneider, Elmer Eric. 1960. The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Tiebout, Charles. 1956. A pure theory of local expenditures. Journal of Political Economy 64 (5): 416–424.