Replication Data for: Parliament, People, or Technocrats? Explaining Mass Public Preferences on Delegation of Policy Making Authority

While delegation of policy making authority from citizens to parliament is the most defining characteristic of representative democracy, public demand for delegating such authority away from legislature/government to technocrats or back to citizens appears to have increased. Drawing on spatial models of voting we argue that the distance between individuals’ ideal policy points, the status quo, experts’ policy positions, and aggregated societal policy preferences can help explain whether individuals prefer to delegate decision making power away from parliament and, if so, to whom. The effects of individuals preferences’ distance from these ideal points is likely to be stronger the more salient the policy issue is for the respective individual. We test this argument using survey experiments in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. The analysis provides evidence for the empirical implications of our theoretical arguments. The research presented here contributes to better understanding variation in citizens’ support for representative democracy and preferences for delegating policymaking authority away from parliament.