TY - JOUR

T1 - Repressive Tolerance

T2 - The Eagerness not to Listen when Consulting

AU - Pedersen, Morten Jarlbæk

PY - 2017/3

Y1 - 2017/3

N2 - Consultation of organised interests and others when drafting laws is often seen as an important source of both input and output legitimacy. But whereas the input side of the equation stems from the very process of listening to societal actors, output legitimacy can only be strengthened if consultation actually leads to improvements of legistlative proposals. A necessary condition for that to be the case is that consultation actually has an effect on proposals. However, this detailed study of consultation reports in Denmark – chosen as a most-likely case when it comes to consultation having a substantial effect on the substance of laws – shows that there is a great difference in the amenability of different branches of government but that, in general, authorities do not listen much despite a very strong consultation institution and tradition. A suggestion for an explanation could be pointing to an administrative culture of repressive tolerance of organised interests: authorities listen but only reacts in a very limited sense. This bears in it the risk of jeopardising the knowledge transfer from societal actors to administrative ditto thus harming the consultation institutions’ potential for strengthening output legitimacy.

AB - Consultation of organised interests and others when drafting laws is often seen as an important source of both input and output legitimacy. But whereas the input side of the equation stems from the very process of listening to societal actors, output legitimacy can only be strengthened if consultation actually leads to improvements of legistlative proposals. A necessary condition for that to be the case is that consultation actually has an effect on proposals. However, this detailed study of consultation reports in Denmark – chosen as a most-likely case when it comes to consultation having a substantial effect on the substance of laws – shows that there is a great difference in the amenability of different branches of government but that, in general, authorities do not listen much despite a very strong consultation institution and tradition. A suggestion for an explanation could be pointing to an administrative culture of repressive tolerance of organised interests: authorities listen but only reacts in a very limited sense. This bears in it the risk of jeopardising the knowledge transfer from societal actors to administrative ditto thus harming the consultation institutions’ potential for strengthening output legitimacy.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - Stakeholders

KW - consultation

KW - Output legitimacy

KW - Regulatory quality

M3 - Journal article

JO - Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration

JF - Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration

SN - 2001-7405

ER -