RATIONAL PLANNING AND POLITICIANS' ATTITUDES TO SPENDING AND REFORM: REPLICATION AND EXTENSION OF A SURVEY EXPERIMENT

The rational planning cycle of formulating strategic goals and using performance information to assess implementation is assumed to assist decision-making by politicians. Empirical evidence for this assumption is, however,... [ view full abstract ]

The rational planning cycle of formulating strategic goals and using performance information to assess implementation is assumed to assist decision-making by politicians. Empirical evidence for this assumption is, however, scarce. Our study replicates Nielsen and Baekgaard’s (2015) experiment on the relation between performance information and politicians’ attitudes to spending and reform and extends this experiment by investigating the role of strategic goals. Based on a randomized survey experiment with 1.484 Flemish city councilors and an analysis of 225 municipal strategic plans, we found that information on low and high performance as well as strategic goals directly impact decision-making by politicians.