Itai Beeri

While theories of local democracy mark political representation as highly important in determining the quality and perception of public services, little has been done to explore the empirical connection. This represents a lacuna in our understanding of how representation affects citizen wellbeing and how citizens determine their satisfaction with public services. We focus on descriptive and symbolic dimensions of representation to elucidate how representation influences citizens’, and minority citizens’ in particular, experience with public services. Utilizing a survey of residents of Haifa, Israel, our findings imply that beyond the descriptive makeup of municipal elected bodies, symbolic dimensions of representation might be even more important for understanding citizen satisfaction. Symbolic representation may impact satisfaction directly and through its contribution to other feelings about government. These findings expand understandings of the importance of diversity in political representation, determinants of satisfaction and how dynamics of good governance contribute to citizens’ experiences.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the issue of mobilization policies, that is, government practices directed at making the mass public voluntarily perform various behaviors for the collective benefit during a crisis. As COVID‐19 vaccinations became accessible, governments faced the challenge of mass vaccination mobilization in order to achieve herd immunization. Aiming to effectively realize this goal, policy designers and regulators worldwide considered various mobilizing tools for vaccination compliance, including rewards and penalties, as they targeted vaccine opposers and hesitators, while trying to avoid the crowding‐out effect among individuals who were intrinsically motivated to get vaccinated. However, the unique circumstances of the Coronavirus pandemic may have eliminated the crowding‐out effect. Thus, our study explored the effect of regulation in the form of positive and negative incentivizing tools (i.e., rewards and penalties) during the coronavirus pandemic on vaccination intentions of 1184 Israeli citizens, prior to the national vaccination campaign. Results indicate that (1) both negative and positive incentives have a similar positive effect on individuals who declare they will not get vaccinated and those who hesitate to get the shot; (2) both positive and negative incentives induce the crowding‐out effect; and (3) negative incentives generate a larger crowding‐out effect in individuals who report preliminary intentions to get vaccinated, compared to positive ones. This emphasizes the need to avoid the crowding‐out effect during the current and similar crises, and suggests considering applying a gradual and adaptive policy design in order to maximize regulatory efficacy and compliance.