Fair and Square? The Effect of Fairness Perceptions on Political Support in Direct Democracy

Direct democratic procedures have long been theorized to enhance citizens' perceptions of legitimacy due to their perceived greater fairness. According to theories of procedural fairness, perceptions of the fairness of political procedures can be expected to enhance legitimacy perceptions in general and especially among the losers of the respective procedures ("softening the blow"). Recent empirical research, however, has questioned these relationships on both empirical and theoretical grounds. Rather, it has been argued and shown that perceptions of fairness in direct democratic procedures are outcome endogenous, and thus primarily transport outcome effects or are ineffective in generating attitudes of political support in general ("widening the gap"). We contribute to this ongoing debate about the theoretical and empirical status of fairness perceptions in the legitimizing capacity of direct democracy by arguing that while fairness perceptions are outcome endogenous, they are not fully determined by outcomes. Only by distinguishing between outcome-dependent and outcome-independent aspects of perceptions of procedural fairness in democratic processes, as well as their effects relative to overall outcome effects on measures of political support, can the direct and indirect contributions of fairness perceptions to any legitimizing capacity of direct democracy be directly assessed. We test our theoretical intuition regarding the consequences of fairness perceptions proposed by procedural fairness theories using four longitudinal studies over the course of real-world direct democratic processes. In addition, we examine the relationship between fairness perceptions and support for direct democratic processes, as well as support for actors and institutions of the wider political system. Results from structural equation models show that while fairness perceptions mediate outcome effects in most cases, outcome-independent aspects of fairness perceptions also contribute to changes in political support, both directly and by softening the blow of a direct democratic defeat. Our study thus contributes to the ongoing debate on the legitimizing effects of democratic innovations by exploring the multiple effects of key fairness mechanisms.