Algorithmic governance: Experimental Evidence on Citizens' and Public Administrators' Legitimacy Perceptions of Automated Decision‐Making

This article investigates legitimacy perceptions of automated decision-making (ADM) among public administrators and citizens. Views of public administrators, who exercise discretion over policy implementation, reflect readiness to integrate AI into decision-making. Governing by AI ought also to be responsive to the view of citizens, whose support democratic governing ultimately rests on. As AI use in governing grows, understanding the elite-mass opinion congruence is crucial, and incongruence suggest misalignment between citizen preferences and policy implementation. Using randomized survey experiments conducted among Finnish toplevel public administrators (N = 842) and a representative sample of citizens (N = 3245), we compare the legitimacy effects of algorithmic transparency and human discretion over decision-making in the context of child protection services. Transparency and human discretion enhance perceived legitimacy, with larger treatment effects among administrators. The study concludes that ADM legitimacy theories extend to a Nordic welfare context.