The Effects of Congruence in Policy Priorities on Satisfaction with Democracy

There is widespread agreement that better policy representation increases citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Previous research on this topic has generally focused on ideological congruence between citizens and representatives. In this article, it is argued that public–elite agreement on policy priorities is another essential aspect of policy representation, but has been largely overlooked in this context. Citizens whose issue concerns are higher on elites’ agendas should be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy. This hypothesis is tested by linking voter survey data to candidate survey and news media content data from the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study. The results show that citizens whose issue concerns are salient amongst party candidates and in the media campaign coverage are indeed more satisfied with democracy in their country. This effect exists not only for congruence with the party for which individuals voted, but also for agreement with the other parties.     

Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy

Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voter preferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfaction depend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentality moderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross-national survey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with a chance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality has no such effect.     

Digital Politics in Western Democracies: A Comparative Study

Satisfaction with democracy is driven by the two mechanisms that affect citizens’ income: the market and the state. When people consider that the levels of economic growth and redistribution are sufficient, they are more satisfied with the performance of democratic institutions. This relationship is moderated by personal income: since low-income citizens are more sensitive to changes in personal economic circumstances than high-income citizens, they give more weight to economic perceptions and opinions about redistribution. In this paper evidence is found of this conditional relationship in survey data from 16 established democracies. The results offer a rich characterisation of the state and market-based mechanisms that affect satisfaction with democracy.     

Reflections and findings on the critical citizen: Civic education – What for?

Abstract.  The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe proclaimed the year 2005 the 'European Year of Democratic Citizenship through Education', but the question is: What does the democracy-promoting citizen look like? This article focuses on the question of whether satisfied and supportive citizens or critical citizens have attitudes that promote democracy. The discussion of this question is based on empirical results from a survey of German citizens (N = 2,000), applying bivariate and multivariate methods. Political criticism is measured by indicators of dissatisfaction, attentiveness and system preference; five types of citizens are constructed: satisfied-attentive, satisfied-inattentive, dissatisfied-attentive, dissatisfied-inattentive citizens with a preference for a democratic system, and one type preferring nondemocratic systems. The article examines which of these types are more consistent with the 'ideal citizen'– defined as a citizen who participates, is well-informed, identifies with democracy and politics, has good internal efficacy and is willing to defend democracy. The data show that attentive citizens are more likely to promote democracy than inattentive ones. Attentive citizens are politically more knowledgeable, identify more strongly with the democratic system, feel more politically competent and are more willing to defend democracy. Political satisfaction or dissatisfaction has less of an influence on these dispositions.     

Intra-Party Politics and Public Opinion: How Candidate Selection Processes Affect Citizens’ Satisfaction with Democracy

Scholars often mention the centrality of parties for the democratic political system. Indeed political parties are indispensable institutions for the linkage between state and society, and should not remain absent in any comparative analysis of citizens’ political attitudes. Yet, only rarely do scholars study how parties shape people’s opinion about democracy. This article seeks to amend this lacuna and examine empirically how party level characteristics, specifically the nature of a party’s candidate selection procedure, relate to the level of satisfaction with democracy among citizens. The authors constructed a cross-national dataset with data on the selection procedures of 130 political parties in 28 country-sessions to examine whether citizens that vote for democratically organized parties are more satisfied with the way democracy works in their country. Additionally, this relationship is examined more closely in Israel and Belgium, two countries where candidate selection procedures show substantial variation and where politicians have made a strong claim for intraparty democratization. Both the cross-national as well as the country-specific analyses indicate that democratic candidate selection are indeed associated with greater satisfaction with democracy.     

Economic Crisis and Support for Democracy in Europe

The study of the impact of the economic crisis on attitudes toward democracy tends to be focused on satisfaction with specific democratic institutions. This article expands upon previous research to explore how the current economic crisis can affect core support for democracy as a regime. Based on European Social Survey data for the Eurozone countries, the findings are twofold. It is shown, firstly, that perceptions of the state of the economy have an impact both on satisfaction with and support for democracy, and, secondly, that citizens’ support for democracy is greater in bailed-out countries. In countries that have experienced intervention, the more critical citizens and those less satisfied with the outputs of democracy are the stronger advocates of democracy. The article argues that this is connected with the tendency of critical citizens in bailed-out countries to blame external agents for the economic situation while increasing the saliency of democratic rules as a reaction to the imposition of unpopular measures.     

Policy congruence and its impact on satisfaction with democracy

The relationship between what citizens want in terms of policies and what they get from political elites is considered one of the key aspects of representative democracies. Scholars have thus investigated thoroughly the state of citizen-elite congruence in advanced democracies and whether this relationship influences citizens' democratic satisfaction. These studies do show that citizens' assessment of their political system and especially their satisfaction with democracy are importantly influenced by the quality of representation and how close they are to their preferred parties or the government position. In the paper, we build on this literature and consider whether congruence between citizen preferences and policies influences citizens' satisfaction with democracy. This last stage of representation has mostly been overlooked in past research. To address this question, we make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (module 4). Policy congruence is measured based on respondent answers to a series of questions with respect to their preferences on public expenditure in eight policy domains. We also compare the effect of policy congruence to other conventional measures of congruence (e.g. party and government congruence). Our results indicate that this new measure of policy congruence has substantial effect on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and more so than previous measures of ideological congruence.     

Can't get no satisfaction with the Westminster model? Winners,losers and the effects of consensual and direct democratic institutions on satisfaction with democracy

Are citizens in consensus democracies with developed direct democratic institutions more satisfied with their political system than those in majoritarian democracies? In this article, individual‐level data from the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and an updated version of Lijphart's multivariate measure of consensus and majoritarian democracy covering 24 countries are used to investigate this question. The findings from logistic multilevel models indicate that consensual cabinet types and direct democratic institutions are associated with higher levels of citizens' satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, consensus democracy in these institutions closes the gap in satisfaction with democracy between losers and winners of elections by both comforting losers and reducing the satisfaction of winners. Simultaneously, consensus democracy in terms of electoral rules, the executive–legislative power balance, interest groups and the party system reduces the satisfaction of election winners, but does not enhance that of losers.     

Democratic demand and supply: a spatial model approach to satisfaction with democracy

Satisfaction with democracy (SWD) is a commonly used indicator, and its determinants have been analysed extensively. But what does dissatisfaction with democracy substantially mean? This paper tests if satisfaction is actually a coherent consequence of citizens considering democratic supply and demand. It starts from the simple idea that satisfaction can be explained by the distance between what “should be” and what “is”; between democratic expectations and reality. I capture this idea in a spatial model of democratic support, where size and direction of the gap between citizens’ expectations and evaluations of democracy determine levels of satisfaction. I use data for 26 countries from the European Social Survey. Taking into account both expectation-surplus and evaluations-surplus gaps, I find that satisfaction is affected by both the size and the direction of the distance between expectations and evaluations. The main finding is that liberal criteria of democratic quality are generally agreed upon amongst citizens, and that a perceived lack of their realization is the strongest predictor of dissatisfaction. Democratic input dimensions like direct participation and output criteria like social justice are more disputed, and create dissatisfaction amongst those wanting more of them as well as those wanting less.     

Who is willing to participate? Dissatisfied democrats,stealth democrats and populists in the United Kingdom

This article demonstrates that two quite distinctive types of political disaffection – ‘dissatisfied democratic’ and ‘stealth democratic’ – exist among British citizens, with the former being more prevalent. While both types manifest low trust in political elites, the dissatisfied democrat is politically interested, efficacious and desires greater political participation, while the contrary is generally true of the stealth democrat. However, stealth democrats are favourably disposed towards direct democracy, which can be attributed to the populist nature of stealth democratic attitudes. Even so, when given the opportunity to take part in a national referendum, neither stealth democrats nor dissatisfied democrats showed much inclination to vote.     

Sustaining democracy: folk epistemology and social conflict

When political philosophers ask whether there is a philosophical justification for democracy, they are most frequently concerned with one of two queries. The first has to do with the relative merits of democracy as compared with other regimes. The second query has to do with the moral bindingness of democratic outcomes. But there is a third query we may be engaging when we are looking for a philosophical justification of democracy: what reason can be given to democratic citizens to pursue democratic means of social change when they are confronted with a democratic result that seems to them seriously objectionable or morally intolerable? In this paper I develop an epistemological response to the third query. The thesis is that we have sufficient epistemological reasons to be democrats. The epistemological norms that we take ourselves to be governed by can be satisfied only under certain social conditions, and these social conditions are best secured under democracy.     

Taking cues from the government: heuristic versus systematic processing in a constitutional referendum

Abstract

One of the main criticisms of direct democracy is that it places excessive demands on voters. Are citizens competent enough to vote directly on policy issues? When stakes are high, do citizens mainly follow elites’ signals or do they decide in line with their issue preferences? This article addresses these questions in a multi-method setting by combining observational and experimental data from an original three-wave panel survey conducted during the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum. In particular, Finite Mixture Models are employed to model voters’ heterogeneous strategies of information processing. Findings show that heuristic voting based on government evaluation prevails over policy-related voting. More specifically, less politically sophisticated and partisan voters relied on government assessment as a heuristic, while sophisticated and independent voters based their decisions mostly on their assessment of the reform. Implications for the question of citizens’ competence in direct democracy are discussed.     

The Quality of Representation and Satisfaction with Democracy: The Consequences of Citizen-Elite Policy and Process Congruence

Citizen-elite congruence has long been considered an important yardstick for the quality of democracy. The literature on citizen satisfaction with democracy, however, has reduced congruence almost exclusively to one of its components, policy congruence. Just as citizens are considered to have positions on policy issues, there is growing scholarly interest in the preferences they have about the process of representation. Yet studies inquiring into the impact of the divergent preferences that citizens and elites have regarding the representational process thus far have been few and their results inconclusive. Combining new, unique data from the 2014 Belgian Election and Candidate Studies, we seek to address this lacuna. Our findings indicate that we cannot understand citizen satisfaction without also taking process into account—even as the policy gap has the greater effect. They should be of interest to scholars of democracy, those concerned about citizen disengagement from politics, and political practitioners.     

When long-distance relationships don't work out: Representational distance and satisfaction with democracy in Europe

We assess the impact of party representation on satisfaction with democracy. Our proposition is that such representation is not only about having a chosen party in government; citizens also derive satisfaction from having their views represented by a political party. We test this through an individual-level measure of policy (in)congruence: the ideological distance between a voter and his or her closest party. Via multi-level modelling of European Election Study data from 1989 to 2009, we find that perceived policy distance matters: the further away that voters see themselves from their nearest party – on either a left-right or a European unification policy dimension – the less satisfied they are with democracy. Notably, this effect is not moderated by party incumbency or size. Voters derive satisfaction from feeling represented by a nearby party even if it is small and out of office. Our results caution against a purely outcomes-driven understanding of democratic satisfaction.     

Social Upheaval and Transformation of Elite Structures: The Case of Finland

The purpose of this study is to ascertain how certain important changes in Finnish society in the 1990s altered the national elite structures and affected democracy. We examine how the patterns of recruitment, interaction and cohesiveness among the elites changed in the period 1991–2001. The data for the study were drawn mainly from postal surveys conducted among the elites and a sample of the population in 1991 and 2001. The first research task was to establish how recruitment to various elites has altered in terms of social stratification and education. The second was to analyse changes in patterns of interaction between various elites as far as physical contacts and attitudes were concerned. The third was to study the relationship between the elites and the general population on the basis of attitudinal affinity. The conclusions were based on theoretical models characterising various elite structures and their interconnections with democracy. The concept of a responsive elite is developed on the grounds of the theory of democratic elitism. The changes in the Finnish elite structure have meant a passage towards an inclusive structure compatible with democracy rather than towards an exclusive elite configuration. Finnish elites have become more open and more diverse.     

Who cares about the public sphere?

This article offers the first empirical and cross-national analysis of citizens’ views about the democratic importance of the public sphere. We first identify three normative functions that public spheres are expected to perform in representative democracies: they provide voice to alternative perspectives, they empower citizens to criticise political authorities and they disseminate information on matters of public interest. We then argue that citizens develop differentiated views about the importance of these democratic functions, depending on (1) their ability to influence political decisions through public debate, and (2) the extent to which voice, critique and information address democratic problems they particularly care about. Drawing on Wave 6 of the European Social Survey, the statistical analysis indicates that citizens in most European countries consider the public sphere very important for democracy, especially its role as a supplier of reliable information. However, certain groups tend to care more about different aspects of the public sphere. More educated citizens are more likely to assign greater importance to all three functions. Members of cultural and sexual minorities are more likely to emphasise the importance of giving voice to alternative perspectives, while citizens dissatisfied with the government are more likely to prioritise public criticism and access to reliable information. Finally, in countries with more democratic public spheres, differences based on education and minority status are wider, while differences based on government satisfaction disappear. These findings support the claim that citizens care more about the public sphere when they can effectively influence political decision making through public debate or when the public sphere addresses democratic problems that are especially important to them. Moreover, our results indicate that citizens see some of the functions that public spheres perform as core aspects of democracy, comparable in importance to free and fair elections and the rule of law. The article thus advances an empirically grounded defence of the centrality of public debate for democracy.     

Unlikely Democrats: Economic Elite Uncertainty under Dictatorship and Support for Democratization

Influential recent scholarship assumes that authoritarian rulers act as perfect agents of economic elites, foreclosing the possibility that economic elites may at times prefer democracy absent a popular threat from below. Motivated by a puzzling set of democratic transitions, we relax this assumption and examine how elite uncertainty about dictatorship—a novel and generalizable causal mechanism impacting democratization—can induce elite support for democracy. We construct a noisy signaling model in which a potential autocrat attempts to convince economic elites that he will be a faithful partner should elites install him in power. The model generates clear predictions about how two major types of elite uncertainty—uncertainty in a potential autocratic successor's policies produced by variance in the pool of would‐be dictator types, and uncertainty in the truthfulness of policy promises made by potential autocratic successors—impact the likelihood of elite‐driven democratization. We demonstrate the model's plausibility in a series of cases of democratic transition.     

The Measurement of Democracy: Towards a New Paradigm

Mainstream political science on democracy has been criticised for ‘regime bias’. This has led political scientists to draw on a narrow range of democratic theory that considers democratic potential only at the cost of ignoring democratic purpose, to ignore other units of observation than the regime, notably the individual citizen, and to overlook advances in measurement theory. A robust normative account of democratic quality, it is argued, should rest on three foundations. First, measurement should start with observations of the regime. No account of democratic quality should be considered valid without an account of the degree of democracy in the regime. This analysis should be grounded in standard democratic theory. Secondly, the measurement effort should follow through to observations of how the potential in the regime is manifested in the lives of citizens. No account of democratic quality should be considered valid without an account of how well the system delivers for citizens. This analysis should be grounded in a theory of the purpose of democracy. Thirdly, pronouncements on democratic quality should finally be made only from some combination or index of information from both systems analysis and individual analysis. That combined analysis should be grounded in measurement theory, specifically the law of methodological individualism and the principle of double book-keeping.     

The three stages of the anti-incumbency vote: Retrospective economic voting in young and established democracies

Economic prosperity is the best recipe for an incumbent government to be re-elected. However, the financial crisis was significantly more consequential for governing parties in young rather than in established democracies. This article introduces the age of democracy as a contextual explanation which moderates the degree to which citizens vote retrospectively. It shows a curvilinear effect of the age of democracy on retrospective economic voting. In a first stage after the transition to democracy, reform governments suffer from a general anti-incumbency effect, unrelated to economic performance. In a second step, citizens in young democracies relate the legitimacy of democratic actors to their economic performance rather than to procedural rules, and connect economic outcomes closely to incumbent support. As democracies mature, actors profit from a reservoir of legitimacy, and retrospective voting declines. Empirically, these hypotheses are corroborated by data on vote change and economic performance in 59 democracies worldwide, over 25 years.     

The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: Evidence from a population-based survey experiment in four West European countries

The study of subjective democratic legitimacy from a citizens’ perspective has become an important strand of research in political science. Echoing the well-known distinction between ‘input-oriented’ and ‘output-oriented’ legitimacy, the scientific debate on this topic has coined two opposed views. Some scholars find that citizens have a strong and intrinsic preference for meaningful participation in collective decision making. But others argue, to the contrary, that citizens prefer ‘stealth democracy’ because they care mainly about the substance of decisions, but much less about the procedures leading to them. In this article, citizens’ preferences regarding democratic governance are explored, focusing on their evaluations of a public policy according to criteria related to various legitimacy dimensions, as well as on the (tense) relationship among them. Data from a population-based conjoint experiment conducted in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is used. By analysing 5,000 respondents’ preferences for different governance arrangements, which were randomly varied with respect to their input, throughput and output quality as well as their scope of authority, light is shed on the relative importance of different aspects of democratic governance. It is found, first, that output evaluations are the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement; second, consistent positive effects of criteria of input and throughput legitimacy that operate largely independent of output evaluations can be discerned; and third, democratic input, but not democratic throughput, is considered somewhat more important when a governance body holds a high level of formal authority. These findings run counter to a central tenet of the ‘stealth democracy’ argument. While they indeed suggest that political actors and institutions can gain legitimacy primarily through the provision of ‘good output’, citizens’ demand for input and throughput do not seem to be conditioned by the quality of output as advocates of stealth democratic theory suggest. Democratic input and throughput remain important secondary features of democratic governance.