Does performance information receive political attention?

• Published date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Jesper Asring Hansen
• Date: 01 July 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13646

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Does performance information receive political attention?

Jesper Asring Hansen

Department of Political Science and

Trygfonden’s Center for Child Research, Aarhus

University, Aarhus C, Denmark

Correspondence

Jesper Asring Hansen, Department of Political

Science and Trygfonden’s Center for Child

Research, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé

7, Aarhus C 8000, Denmark.

Email: jesper@ps.au.dk

Abstract

This study examines whether performance information affects the political

agenda. I offer and test two hypotheses on performance information in

politics—the attention-allocation hypothesis, suggesting that politicians leverage

performance data to devote attention to problems in service delivery, and the

politicization hypothesis, stating that political concerns alter elected officials focus

on performance information. I examine the hypotheses by gathering administra-

tive data on pupils’standardized testscores combined withmore than6000 min

of meetings in Danish municipal school committees, on which I leverage two-way

fixed effects models. The results show that performance shortfalls receive political

attention, regardless of the politicization of the environment. In contrast to a vast

literature stating how the political context alters attention to performance infor-

mation, these results demonstrate that political entities leverage performance data

to discover problems in need of attention in ways similar to those of other types

of organizations.

Evidence for Practice

•Performance shortfalls receive political attention.

•Performance information directs political attention, regardless of the politiciza-

tion of the environment.

•Performance information can be used to guide political attention to problematic

aspects of service delivery.

One of the core objectives of expanding the collection of

performance indicators in the public sector is to improve

political decision-making. A large and growing literature

examines politicians’interpretations of performance data,

demonstrating how performance information sometimes

fails to deliver on this promise (Baekgaard, Christensen, Dahl-

mann, Mathiasen, & Petersen, 2019; Christensen, Dahlmann,

Mathiasen, Moynihan, & Petersen, 2018; Christensen &

Moynihan, 2020; Desmidt & Meyfroodt, 2021; George, Baek-

gaard, Decramer, Audenaert, & Goeminne, 2020;Nielsen&

Moynihan, 2016). Yet, there exists an even more fundamen-

tal question on performance information in politics, which

public administration inquiry has yet to answer: does perfor-

mance information make its way to the political agenda in the

first place?

Although fundamental, this question is by no means

trivial, given that performance information can be consid-

ered both a blessing and an unnecessary distraction in

politics. On the one hand, it can inform elected officials of

where to allocate their scarce attention. On the other

hand, politicians have to focus on many issues that have

little to do with performance information. As Moynihan

(2008) writes, skeptics argue that “politics makes perfor-

mance information irrelevant […] Relative to partisan

goals, ideological biases, stakeholder pressure, and con-

stituent needs, performance data is not especially influen-

tial”(Moynihan, 2008, 11). Distinguishing between

instances where performance information enters the

political arena and those where the influence is negligible

is key to discovering the potential for performance infor-

mation to inform political decision-making.

This study answers the question of whether perfor-

mance information receives political attention. Even

though performance information matters to voters’voice,

exit strategies, and turnout (Bhandari, Larreguy, &

Marshall, 2021; Holbein, 2016; Holbein & Hassell, 2019;

Received: 7 March 2022Revised: 20 March 2023Accepted: 6 April 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13646

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permitsuse,distribution and reproduction in any

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© 2023 The Author. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:763–774. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar 763