Procedural fairness theory posits that the way in which authoritative decisions are made strongly impacts people’s willingness to accept them. This article challenges this claim by contending that democratic governments can achieve little in terms of acceptance of policy decisions by the procedural means at their disposal. Instead, outcome favorability is the dominant determinant of decision acceptance. The article explicates that while central parts of procedural fairness theory are true, outcome favorability is still overwhelmingly the strongest determinant of individuals’ willingness to accept authoritative decisions. It improves on previous research by locating all key variables into one causal model and testing this model using appropriate data. Findings from a large number of experiments (both vignette and field) reproduce the expected relationships from previous research and support the additional predictions.

Building on a widely held account of transparency as integral to legitimate and successful governance, this article addresses the question of how transparency in decision-making can influence public perceptions of political decision-making. An original experiment with 1099 participants shows that people who perceive political decision-making to be transparent judge the degree of procedural fairness highly and are more willing to accept the final decision. Perceptions of transparency are, however, largely shaped by transparency cues (e.g. statements provided by external sources) rather than by the degree of actual transparency, and no direct effect of actual transparency can be found on decision acceptance. The implication is that it is difficult to influence people's acceptance of political decisions by means of transparency reforms, as people base their assessments of political decisions largely on considerations other than evalutations of actual decision-making procedures.

To what extent can the conduct of government officials help make unfavourable decisions acceptable to those that are affected by them? To provide an answer to this under-explored question, this paper presents findings from two scenario experiments that allow the conduct of individual officials to vary according to a pre-determined standard, while keeping an unfavourable decision constant in a setting that approaches the real world. There are three main findings. First, both actual conduct and perceived fairness of treatment affect decision acceptance. Second, actual conduct matters much less for decision acceptance than perceived fairness of treatment. Third, citizens’ beliefs about the moral right to a favourable outcome condition the effect of actual conduct (but not of perceived treatment fairness). In particular, morally disappointed citizens are less likely to accept the decision irrespective of how they are treated.