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Satisfied? Institutional Determinants of Citizen Evaluations of Democracy
Author(s) -
Berggren Heidi M.,
Fugate Gregory A.,
Preuhs Robert R.,
Still Dennis R.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2004.tb00176.x
Subject(s) - representativeness heuristic , democracy , legislature , proportional representation , context (archaeology) , politics , corporate governance , political science , representative democracy , representation (politics) , electoral system , government (linguistics) , public administration , political economy , economics , law , social psychology , psychology , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , finance , biology
Based on theories about party and electoral systems provided by Downs (1957), Anderson and Guillory (1997), and Duverger (1984), we examine the relationship between citizen satisfaction with democracy and the institutional context in which democratic participation takes place. Using a multi‐level design that controls for both institutional‐level and individual‐level differences, we find that as the number of political parties increases, citizen satisfaction with democracy first decreases and then increases. This result holds regardless of whether or not one supported the ruling government in the previous election, undermining previous research that contends that “winner” or “loser” status leads to diverging evaluations of democratic structures, even when controlling for economic evaluations. Additionally, we find that satisfaction with democracy is significantly lower in large district proportional representation (PR) systems relative to single‐member district systems and when the difference between votes and legislative seat‐shares is high. This finding suggests that we ought to reconsider the theoretical interaction between representativeness and effective governance as well as the democratic process versus the outcomes of elections.