First Advisor

Melody Ellis Valdini

Term of Graduation

Spring 2022

Date of Publication

6-27-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.) in Political Science

Department

Political Science

Language

English

Subjects

Legitimacy of governments, Philippines -- Politics and government, Indonesia -- Politics and government

DOI

10.15760/etd.7900

Physical Description

1 online resource (iv, 68 pages)

Abstract

While mechanisms of legitimacy development have been extensively studied in governments as a cohesive whole, procedural legitimation of the legislative branch has not been explored. Using a procedural justice framework to identify indicators of openness in legislative rules, this paper theorizes that the presence or absence of these indicators will be the key factor in public perceptions of legitimacy of the legislature. This paper hypothesizes that where more indicators are present, a legislature will be viewed as more legitimate by its citizens as compared to a legislature with fewer indicators.

Comparing Indonesia and the Philippines, two presidential democracies in Southeast Asia with very similar economic, political, and historical circumstances, this paper reviews the procedural rules of both legislatures. It further performs a qualitative analysis of publicly available media reporting to corroborate whether the public has the opportunity to form opinions of legislative legitimacy based on the availability of information on legislative procedure. This paper finds that more openness indicators are present in the legislature of the Philippines than in the legislature of Indonesia. Because the Philippines legislature enjoys higher public satisfaction than the legislature of Indonesia, a positive relationship between indicators of openness and perception of legitimacy is exposed. In the absence of other persuasive explanations of legislative legitimacy in these two cases, and with qualitative evidence demonstrating the public has access to information on legislative procedure when forming their opinions on the legitimacy of the legislature, the theory of legislative legitimation via procedure is supported by these cases.

Rights

© 2022 Megan Elizabeth Cox

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/37954

Download

Share

COinS