Quality Standards, Implementation Autonomy, and Citizen Satisfaction with Public Services: Cross-National Evidence

Abstract

This article investigates how institutional context shapes the relationship between citizens’ evaluations of performance and archival measures of performance contingent on administrative autonomy — standards, human resources, and financial autonomy. Using cross-national education data, we find that student performance is positively associated with parental evaluations of schools. We also find that they are more closely aligned when agencies have greater autonomy in managing employees, and when national-level bureaucracies have greater authority in setting the performance standards. This article advances our understanding of the role of administrative autonomy in citizen satisfaction and provides implications for the institutional designs that can benefit performance assessment.

Keywords: Citizen Satisfaction, Performance Assessment, Bureaucratic Autonomy, Decentralization