CHAPTER 1 2

INTRODUCTION 2

Does Government Performance Really Matter? 3

Disentangling the Drivers of Perceptions of Public Services 7

Purpose of the Study 10
Summary and Research Questions 11
Hypotheses Error! Bookmark not defined.
Analyzing the Drivers of Perceptions 14
Assumptions, Limitations, and Scope 15

Organization of the Dissertation 17

Note on Language and Terminology 19

Summary Error! Bookmark not defined.

References Error! Bookmark not defined.

-1-
 Chapter 1

Introduction

In a famous quote in The Prince while discussing public image as a source of political

power, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience

what you really are” (Machiavelli, 1988). Perceptions are ultimately what matter the most

to build legitimacy and political support. It is thus unsurprising that the role perceptions

play in shaping politics, power, and policy is one of the most widely studied areas in the

social sciences. And yet, we political scientists still have a very rough understanding of the

drivers of social and political cognition (North 2005) and the micro-foundations of human

agency. Most of our attention has been placed in measuring and analyzing the drivers and

impact of perceptions regarding political institutions and agents –the government, the

parliament, political parties, the media, and the like. In contrast, the study of perceptions

regarding the delivery of public services has been more limited. This dissertation will build

upon the existing –but fragmented– literature to empirically explore the main drivers of

perceptions of public service delivery.

-2-
Does Government Performance Really Matter?

Does government performance really matter? Politicians and bureaucrats frequently seem

to operate under the assumption that good government performance is seamlessly

assimilated and perceived by citizens. In most reforms aimed at improving public services,

rarely any attention is paid to the potential cognitive limitations recipients of these services

might actually confront to truly notice any service improvement –no matter what objective

performance indicators may say. However, most conventional models of democratic

accountability are based on the assumption that citizens are able to evaluate government

performance accurately and make political decisions accordingly (Dahl 1989; Hamilton et

al [1788] 1999). But the link between government performance and perceptions of

performance has been shown to be empirically weak, at best (Mahon et alt, 2013).

While the relationship between objective performance and perceptions arguably exists, in

some instances significant improvements (or declines) in access and quality of public

services go unnoticed. In other cases public agencies seem to earn (or lose) the approval of

citizens for no apparent reason –or, at least, not due to a change in performance in service

delivery. Many enthusiastic reformers have been left in confusion as citizens did not seem

join their enthusiasm despite the increasingly availability of government performance

indicators and loud performance rhetoric (see Aritzi, 2010). The drivers of subjective

perceptions of objective performance seem then to be the key factors establishing when

performance matters.

In pure accountability models (Ferejohn, 1986) retrospective assessment and control is only

possible under very restrictive conditions, which are rarely met (Maravall and Sanchez

Cuenca, 2008). Later models of accountability have relaxed most of these conditions, but

-3-
important informational requirements always remained. The principal (citizens) faces

significant limitations to know or judge the objective outcomes of public policies and

service provision by the agent (the government), which weakens the accountability

function (Przeworski, 1999; Bovens, 2007). The recent surge in transparency laws, an

increasing number of new accountability institutions, and the increased use of information

technologies in government elsewhere promised to mitigate these informational

asymmetries between governments and citizens, and increase the ability of the latter to

learn about real government behavior and results (Amstrong, 2005; Berry and Howell

2007; Peterson and West, 2003). The intent behind all these initiatives has been to

strengthen public support for public institutions and politicians alike by increasing

transparency and communicating the results of government action, sometimes overloading

citizens with performance indicators. However, findings from recent experiments suggest

that the link between transparency and perceptions of a performing, trustworthy

government is weak at best (Grimmelikhuijsen, 2012). This is probably because “the

citizen as decision-maker essentially suffers from the same deficiencies as the decision

makers featured in the managerial decision-making literature: information overload,

bounded rationalities, selective perceptions, misleading heuristics and so on” (Van De

Walle and Roberts, 2008: 11).

Still, although with important caveats, most scholars subscribe the existence of a

relationship between objective performance and perceptions of performance, which then

helps generate other by-products such as increasing political support and trust (Christensen

and Laegreid, 2002; Espinal, Hartlyn and Kelly, 2006; Yang and Holzer, 2006; Van Ryzin,

-4-
2007; Aritzi, Brumby, Manning et alt, 2010). All these authors also agreed on the

challenges to empirically test this intuitive “performance theory”. The resulting evidence is

both mixed and scarce when it comes to the factors that shape the relationship between

actual performance 1 of government agencies and agents and citizen perceptions of their

performance.

Whether government performance in service delivery can have an impact on public opinion

–and thus inform citizens’ satisfaction and support for government institutions–, this seems

to be constrained by specific factors that reinforce or undermine the ability of citizens to

accurately learn from objective government action. Indeed, Pollit and Chambers (2013)

note that the cofactors necessary for information on improved performance to increase

public trust are just daunting. The conditions for an accurate perception of performance

information include a reception of that information, which should grasp the attention of

citizens, go beyond their individual expectations, be understandable, and be trusted (Pollit

et al, 2013: 37).

An array of factors and information asymmetries thus seem to undermine our capacity to

accurately assess how the government is doing. But the strength of these informational

constraints seems to vary with the context. Van Ryzin (2007), for example, shows how

citizens seem to have a very accurate idea of government performance when they directly

experience specific services (versus non-users). Manning et alt (2010) suggest that the

strength of the link seems to be stronger when the specific government agencies are very

visible to citizens. Many argue that the public has a very limited understanding of which

services a particular government –or government agency– actually provides, and thus, the

1
Defined as access and quality of specific public services.

-5-
performance-perceptions link suffers from important attribution issues that undermine it

(Dinsdale and Marson, 2000; Swindell and Kelly, 2000; Van de Walle and Bouckaert,

2003; Sacks, 2012).

Moreover, others make the case that the very visibility of public policies and public

services biases perceptions regarding government performance in significant ways. In

particular, consistent with Van Ryzin, Mettler (2011) finds that users of very visible public

services are more sensitive to variations in performance than non-users, or than

beneficiaries of "invisible" forms of welfare redistribution (such as tax discounts), which

may rely on ideology or preconceptions instead of performance in order to assess

government agencies. As a consequence, she observes, citizens in welfare systems that rely

more on "invisible" than explicit public services tend to hold more negative attitudes

towards public services, and vice versa.

In this regard, others have argued that, in the event of information gaps that may prevent

citizens to make accurate retrospective assessments regarding government performance,

they still can resort to prior beliefs –such as ideology (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2008), stereotypes

regarding bureaucrats (Van de Walle, 2004), racial/ethnic identity and religious beliefs

(Devos, Spini, and Schwartz, 2002). As Goodsell puts it, "a wide gap exits between

bureaucracy's reputation and its record" (2004: 4). These alternative explanations have been

offered as competing hypotheses to the performance-driven theory of perceptions

formation, which we can wrap up as the variety of possible prior beliefs that may be as

important in shaping our perceptions of government agencies.

-6-
Disentangling the Drivers of Perceptions of Public Services

If opinions do not come from a vacuum and people arguably take the actual performance of

government agencies and officials into account to some degree, then the unsolved puzzle is

defining the conditions for performance to matter in public opinion’s mind –or, in

other words, when perceptions accurately match objective performance. The potential

competing explanations identified in the literature, whether at the theoretical or empirical

level, can be grouped within the broader category of factors that raise our “cognitive

awareness” of actual performance of government agencies, and those factors that affect our

“interpretation” of the observed performance. The gap in the knowledge that this research

contributes to overcome is empirically identifying the key factors that constrain the ability

of citizens to observe and accurately assess the performance of service delivery agencies

related to public services, while using adequate -and in some cases original- data to validate

the hypotheses, and controlling for the interactions in between these factors as well as

potential spill-over effects.

There is a need to empirically review our knowledge in this area because, despite the

growing attention on citizens' perceptions of public services and government performance

in service delivery, the available research is still quite limited, fragmented, and frequently

uses weak empirical proxies to key variables. In particular, current research and data leaves

a gap in our knowledge due to four interconnected weaknesses:

 A good share of the theoretical discussions in the literature focused either in the

relationship between government performance and trust in government (public

management), between government performance and political support (political

science), or between performance and satisfaction with public services (most

-7-
 common approach in the marketing literature). In all these cases, the discussions

focus on the extremes of the equation, and work either under assumptions about

how objective performance is seamlessly translated into perceptions, or develop an

array of competing hypotheses for the key factors bounding rationality and

perceptions.

 As a consequence, and with counted exceptions, a large proportion of the existing

empirical research did not put enough focus to better understanding the potential

individual cognitive constraints mediating in the relationship in between service

delivery, on the one hand, and satisfaction, trust and political support, on the other.

 In addition to it, good data on the performance of public services are hard to find,

and this is even truer for developing countries. Even when sources of data exist, the

comparability across public administration is low, limiting the generalizability of

the results. Due to this challenge, a good share of the literature often relies on broad

metrics of government performance, such as economic growth (cite), access to

education (cite), and so on. While these measures might be a proxy to the objective

performance of government, they do not capture all the key dimensions relevant to

citizens' experience with public services, which encompasses not just access to

these services as user, but also their quality in the form timeliness, attentiveness,

caring, results, and so on.

 Similarly, good longitudinal data measuring citizens' attitudes towards broad sets of

public services are hard to find. Due to this challenge, earlier seminal research

relied on general social surveys, which often contain questions on perceptions of

performance of the bureaucracy or public administration (e.g. Van de Walle, 2004)

-8-
 and placed the focus on that macro aggregate instead of specific agencies or public

services. In other cases, this type of aggregated dependent variable was the only

available comparable indicator (Sacks, 2012). However, a series of city surveys on

citizen perceptions of public services are sprouting all over the world, and

particularly in the OECD and in Latin America. These newly created longitudinal

datasets open an opportunity to perform in-depth research on the drivers of

perceptions of public services that simply did not exist before.

 Finally, even when recent research is starting to use perceptions of specific public

services and to measure objective performance of specific agencies, most research

thus far is of US or European origin. Evidence from less developed regions is still

scarce and often inconclusive. These mixed results may be due to the paradox that

the size of service delivery improvements that can be achieved in very developed

countries is necessarily limited and marginal, vis-a-vis less developed countries. As

discussed in Manning et alt (2010), the jump from lack of hospitals to a new

hospital is by far more visible to citizens than marginal improvements such as the

acquisition of new CT-Scans or the introduction of new hospital management

techniques. Expanding the evidence to include experiences of fast-changing public

services in developing countries will increase the maximum variance of the relevant

independent variables. I argue that, by looking at the experience in emerging

countries, this study could help clarify the existing contradicting evidence.

-9-
Purpose of the Study

This dissertation is primarily focused on analyzing and empirically testing the importance

of the factors shaping citizens’ ability to accurately perceive government performance in

the delivery of public services. It does so by focusing on the recent experience of Latin

America, where significant transformations in service delivery have taken place i n the last

decade, but with mixed results in terms of public opinion perceptions and favorability.

By exploring the experiences in a set of three large metropolitan areas in Latin America

over time, and by examining perceptions on a variety of public services, this research tests

the internal and external validity of key hypotheses derived from the existing fragmented

literature on the conditions that foster accurate or bounded perceptions of service delivery,

for the case of locally-delivered public services. It does so by using a combination of

quantitative and qualitative methods, and by exploiting both original data and valuable

secondary sources of data that have rarely been used for social research. The aim of this

study is thus provide empirical validity to help consolidate the theoretical discussions

surrounding the drivers of perceptions of performance of government services.

Broadening our understanding regarding the cognitive challenges that affect our ability to

correctly perceive government performance is fundamental from a governance perspective.

By identifying the limits citizens face in keeping governments accountable, this study

empirically contributes to the larger discussions within the discipline on political behavior

and public management. In the first case, it provides evidence on the factors that disconnect

government performance from perceptions, and thus from opinion, political support and,

ultimately, voting behavior. In the second case, it contributes to the debate on the link

- 10 -
between performance and trust in government, by helping better understand the

intermediate steps interceding in between these two variables. It also provides a normative

guidance on the potential effectiveness of policy strategies geared towards overflowing

citizens with performance data as a way to strengthen social accountability of government

agencies.

In addition to it, there are more practical considerations that are addressed by this study.

The last two decades have witnessed a surge in the development of citizen satisfaction

surveys with public services, both in developed and developing nations and particularly at

the city level. Despite old and new valid criticism (Stipak 1979; Howard 2010), these

citizen satisfaction surveys are being used in many jurisdictions to measure

attitudes towards public services and inform both the policy agenda and the service delivery

improvement strategies. Assuming that performance in service delivery seamlessly

translates to perceptions -and then to opinions and attitudes- is one of the various sins both

policymakers and the media are committing, and this study will contribute to improve the

interpretation of these survey results.

Research Question and Main Hypotheses

The growing literature analyzing the drivers of opinion-formation regarding public

institutions offer some clues regarding the limiting cognitive factors affecting perceptions,

and this dissertation empirically assesses the particular role played by these factors in

interfering with perceptions of government agency performance. I will now present my

primary research question and the guiding sub-questions that serve as stepping-stones in

- 11 -
solving the puzzle posed by the disconnect between performance and perceptions in

citizens' minds.

Primary Research Question: What are the main drivers (and constraints) of

citizens' perceptions of performance of government delivery agencies?

By posing this question, I defy the general assumption that objective performance is

seamlessly translated into perceived performance. Instead, I look at the conditions under

which subjective perceptions and objective information on government performance match,

and what the key factors intermediating in this relationship are.

Putting together the theoretical and empirical literatures, two broad sets of hypotheses

emerge. The first set of hypotheses consistently mentioned propose that perceptions of

performance will reflect actual government performance more accurately (“cognitive

awareness”) when: (i) issues addressed by these public services are more salient for

citizens 2; (ii) delivery agencies and officials are more visible and there is a more direct

contact3; (iii) individuals are direct and frequent users of these services4; and (iv) the size of

performance change is significant enough5.

A second group of sub-hypotheses (focused on how we “interpret” government

performance) expects perceptions of performance to follow the direction of performance

2
See particularly Edwards, Mitchell and Welch (1995) and the related literature on electoral behavior
regarding the effect of issue salience in assessing incumbent performance.
3
Aritzi et alt (2010); Llewellyn et alt (2013)
4
Kumlin (2004); Bouckaert and Van der Walle (2003)
5
Lord and Maher (2005), chapter 2.

- 12 -
change when: (v) actual performance disconfirms expectations 6; and (vi) there is fairness

and equal treatment in the access to these services 7.

The focus of this research is placed on the empirical analysis of all these six elements that

consistently emerge in the theoretical literature as potentially relevant for the connection

between objective performance and perceptions of performance. These factors are issue

salience, visibility of delivery agents, frequency of use of assessed public services,

expectations, and fair and equal treatment. While I consider the size of performance change

as another important factor,

I will now present four sub-questions that are derived from these hypothesized factors.

 Sub-Question 1. How might issue salience affect perceptions of the performance of

different government agencies?

 Sub-Question 2. How might the visibility of delivering public agencies and agents

affect perceptions of performance? And, specifically, do users of public services

have more accurate perceptions of agency performance than non-users?

Sub-Question 3. How might the disconfirmation of prior expectations particularly

affect the change in perceptions of performance?

Sub-Question 4. How might fairness and homogeneity in service delivery affect

perceptions of performance?

The specific prior evidence regarding these questions, as well as their significance, are

discussed in depth in Chapter 2. The subsequent empirical chapters review the implications

6
Citations
7
Citations

- 13 -
of these hypotheses for my primary research question. Next section will describe the

methodological approach to provide an adequate response to the proposed puzzle.

Analyzing the Drivers of Perceptions

An initial part of this research will be of a theoretical nature, as it grounds a priori

hypotheses in the discussion of current competing theoretical literatures. However, most of

the study is based on comparative research, largely using quantitative methods. In some

specific cases qualitative methods are used -particularly focus groups- with the purpose of

triangulating the results obtained from the quantitative analysis, and to better grasp and

interpret the particular context for these observed results.

The first empirical chapter explores the factors that drive citizens' perceptions of service

delivery quality, using data from Lima, Peru. The second and third chapters look at the

particular experiences in service delivery in the Colombian cities of Cali and Medellin,

respectively. By using longitudinal data from local citizen surveys on perceptions of service

delivery as well as objective sources of information, 8 and by triangulating the results with

other qualitative methods (in-depth interviews, focus groups), the three case studies provide

a richer, exhaustive look at the drivers and constraints of citizens' perceptions of

performance in service delivery.

The set of empirical chapters progressively grow in complexity. The first two empirical

chapters look at one single public service (urban transport), by analyzing perceptions over

8
While understanding how well public services actually work is not a main concern in this dissertation, and
the focus is exclusively on where the perceptions of service delivery come from and what factors mediate in
the formation of perceptions, the need to measure actual performance in service delivery to compare it with
perceptions of performance requires objective data in an array of key performance indicators, which I draw
from administrative systems, government reports, and requested datasets to planning departments and other
government offices.

- 14 -
time and across the city, before, during, and after the introduction of the new Bus-Rapid

Transit system in Lima and Cali. Both chapters assess the relative importance of the

hypothesized factors and alternative explanations, and control for spill-over effects,

dynamic changes and social network effects. However, while in Lima the intervention was

geographically limited and unsatisfied citizens could resort to many other (public, private,

informal) modes of transport -thus offering a Tieboutian escape to unsatisfied users- in the

case of Cali the intervention substituted the whole previous system of transport,

monopolizing that service delivery area. The third empirical chapter broadens the

perspective by simultaneously looking at the whole set of locally-delivered public services

in Medellin, and the interactions in between the performance in each public service, and the

performance at the city-level as a whole.

In analyzing the longitudinal data in these three cities, the analysis relies on multilevel and

logistic regression models to measure whether the degree of accuracy in assessing agency

performance is bounded by the cognitive constraints described above. In addition, in two

cases additional original datasets have been collected within ongoing evaluation work

funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, and will allow for the use of quasi-

experimental methods, adding robustness and internal validity to the analysis.

Assumptions and Limitations

A critical assumption in this dissertation is that citizens are all able to form an opinion

regarding the performance of specific public services when they respond to a related survey

questions. I assume they are able to do so regardless of their socio-economic status,

education level, or any other demographic characteristic. However, I do not assume their

- 15 -
opinions will be correct or based on any factual data. They may come from preconceptions,

other people's opinions, ideology or partisan affinity shortcuts to assess the value public

services, and so on.

Conversely to most of the existing empirical literature, I do not assume that government

performance in service delivery and the quality of these services are homogenous across

any given jurisdiction. In fact, spatial variance in service delivery will be one of my key

independent variables, as will be discussed in chapter 2.

There are limitations in the study worth mention forehand, which I nevertheless try to

mitigate by expanding the scope of the comparative analysis or the sources of data.

The first limitation is derived from the focus on urban contexts in Latin America. Although

the study gives a comparative look at the experiences in various large metropolises from

different countries, the external validity of the results could be arguably more limited than

in a global analysis of the issue. To assess the relevance of this a priori limitation, the

conclusions chapter will discuss whether the findings exposed in this study complement

and confirm other research developed in the United States and in Europe, as well as in other

developing countries.

The second limitation is derived from methodological issues often found in surveys of

citizen attitudes towards local public services. Van De Walle and Van Ryzin (2011) point

out that experimental evidence suggests that the order of questions in a citizen survey could

have important effects on reported satisfaction with specific public services as well as

overall citizen satisfaction. To mitigate that methodological issue, I triangulate the results

- 16 -
with additional original data collected in the context of an independent evaluation of these

public services, which allows also for the use of quasi-experimental methods.

Organization of the Dissertation

The dissertation will be organized as follows:

Chapter 2 (Literature Review) will present a review of the relevant literature, namely that

related to discussing the drivers of perceptions of public services, underlining the factors

shaping perceptions of service delivery performance. The focus will be largely placed on

identifying the main factors constraining people’s ability to accurately assess government

action and results. To goal of the review of these literatures will be to consolidate a

theoretical framework and ground the key fundamental hypotheses regarding the drivers of

perceptions of service delivery, to be tested in the empirical chapters.

Chapter 3 (Methods and Data) will review previous methodological approaches to analyze

the drivers of perceptions and trust, and will provide a detailed description of the three-step

methodological approach chosen to provide convincing evidence regarding the conditions

under which objective performance of public agencies has the expected impact on citizens

perceptions (and therefore on their levels of trust in these government entities). Through

three chapters, the study will test the relevant hypotheses and alternative explanations in a

comparative fashion, by looking at the experiences of three large Latin American. The

potential and limitations of data used for each empirical chapter will be discussed in detail.

Chapter 4 (Visibility, Expectations, Fairness, and Priorities: Perceptions of Small-Scale

Urban Transport Upgrading in Lima, Peru) will focus on a particularly massive

intervention –the introduction of modern Bus-based Rapid Transit (BRT) systems– and

- 17 -
analyze its objective impact on citizens’ welfare, and the subjective impact on perceptions

of performance. Data comes from local administrative sources and annual local citizen

polls on perceptions of service delivery, with sample sizes around 1,400 each year.

Furthermore, additional data was collected in sample areas to allow triangulation of results,

use of quasi-experimental techniques, and more in-depth analysis on inequality in service

delivery. The analysis will allow testing if and how agency visibility, evolving

expectations, fairness in service delivery, and individual preferences impact the accuracy of

perceptions of performance.

Chapter 5 (Visibility, Expectations, Fairness, and Priorities: Perceptions of Large-Scale

Urban Transport Upgrading in Cali, Colombia) also focuses on a focus on a Bus-based

Rapid Transit (BRT) system intervention, and it also analyzes its objective impact on

citizens’ welfare, and the subjective impact on perceptions of performance. In comparison

with the Lima case, Cali completely replaced the previous urban transport system, leaving

no choice to citizens but using the new system. Agency and local administrative sources are

used, as well as an annual local citizen survey on perceptions of service delivery, with

sample size of 2,400 per year. Similar to the Lima case, additional data was collected in

sample areas o allow for quasi-experimental analysis. The analysis will also allow testing

for the battery of hypotheses and alternative explanations discussed in this study.

Chapter 6 (The Drivers of Perceptions of Government Performance: Change and

Resurgence in Medellin, Colombia) will take a step further and shift the focus from a single

public service to the broad spectrum of public services delivered at the metropolitan level

Data comes from administrative sources and longitudinal surveys on citizens' perceptions

of public services, with sample size around 1,500 respondents per year. For this empirical

- 18 -
test, the chapter will analyze simultaneously the impact of perceptions of service delivery

for all the services provided by Medellin’s public agencies, as well as spillover effects in

between perceptions of different public services, and in relation to government as a whole.

Chapter 7 (Conclusions, Discussion, and Suggestions for Future Research) will

summarize the main findings, perform a comparative analysis of the three cases, discuss the

implications and limitations of the research project, and suggest the way forward for future

research regarding the determinants of the performance-trust link.

Note on Language and Terminology

Perceptions of performance can be defined as: (i) knowledge about performance in

absolute terms (e.g. electricity coverage is 95% this year) or (ii) knowledge about

performance in relative terms (e.g. public health services are improving compared to last

year). In the second interpretation, performance is taken as a perceived trend. While both

measures allow assessing how accurate perceptions are in relation to reality, the first option

requires an ideal omniscient citizen that does not exist in practice –as we know that even

governments do not have an accurate understanding of their real performance– while the

second interpretation is less demanding (i.e. more realistic) and this research project uses it

as dependent variable.

- 19 -