Aidan Connaughton (APRW)

Speaker & Title

Aidan Connaughton, "Volunteer Bureaucrats, Public Meetings, and the Value of Public Comment"

Abstract

How do local policymakers incorporate public comment into their decision-making process? The propensity for public commenting is unequally distributed among the general population, and the preferences of public commenters are biased, but little research exists about the recipients of public comment, who possess both substantial policymaking power and discretion: a group I term "volunteer bureaucrats." I argue that this group is likely to display even more pronounced biases than public commenters and has both the means and the incentive to exercise a significant amount of discretion in responding to the public. Using the case of Massachusetts land use boards and commissions, I conduct a series of qualitative interviews and observation of public land use meetings to develop a theory of responsiveness and accountability in public meetings. I then conduct an elite survey of Massachusetts land use board and commission members to 1) assess descriptive representation among volunteer bureaucrats, 2) explore volunteer bureaucrats' policy attitudes, and 3) test the effect of public comment on volunteer bureaucrats' decisions with a vignette experiment. I find evidence of descriptive representational bias on Massachusetts land use boards and commissions and that volunteer bureaucrats respond to negative public comment by imposing delays on housing development.