Collaboration or Hierarchy: Experimental Evidence on Governance Modes and Legitimacy Perceptions

ABSTRACT Amidst growing interest in collaborative governance as means to enhance the legitimacy of public governance, this article investigates public officials' perceptions of this governance mode. Despite theoretical propositions linking collaborative governance to enhanced legitimacy, empirical validation is scarce. Using a factorial survey experiment with 932 public officials in the Finnish central administration, the article investigates if collaborative governance promotes legitimacy compared with hierarchical bureaucracy. The results are clear: collaborative governance does not inherently boost perceived legitimacy, but rather undermines it. This study captures the causal relationships between governance modes, key governance traits (stakeholder opposition/support and majority opposition/support), and perceived legitimacy, thereby challenging prevailing theoretical assumptions about the merits of collaborative governance.