Preferences for Regional Authority and Attitudes Towards the Multilevel Decision-Making Process in Norway

One of the main benefits associated with local and regional government is that they bring ‘government closer to the people.’ Previous studies suggest that local and regional governments are more responsive to citizens’ policy preferences than national governments. Although there are several studies exploring responsiveness, it is rarely studied which citizens value local and regional government and why they value subnational government. I first assess citizens’ preferences for self-rule –authority exercised by a government in its own jurisdiction– and for shared-rule –collaboration between national and subnational governments. Utilising experimental survey data from Round 19 of the Norwegian Citizen Panel (NCP) which includes more than 1,900 respondents, this paper investigates how preferences for self-rule and shared-rule affect individuals’ attitudes towards the multilevel decision-making process. I hypothesise that citizens who prefer self-rule will report higher levels of willingness to accept a public policy decision that is made unilaterally by the subnational governments. On the other hand, citizens who prefer shared-rule will report higher levels of willingness to accept a decision made by the national government if this decision is also supported by a subnational government. Another empirical test is performed employing a different operationalisation of the dependent variable: the unit of change in an individual’s willingness to accept a decision after being informed that another level of government is supporting the decision. The results are important as they could explain which citizens value local and/or regional government and which citizens prefer multilevel government.