Previous authors have found greater political support among electoral winners than losers, but they define winners and losers at a single time point, and employ a dichotomous categorization that neglects possible variations within each group. This study considers both the past history of winning or losing and the impact of ideological distance from the government on a political support indicatorsatisfaction with democracy. Using a multilevel model covering thirty-one countries, the authors show that the relationship between winner/loser status and satisfaction with democracy has a marginal dynamic nature and a policy content. Among present losers, previous experience of victory assuaged dissatisfaction, while among those presenting a consolidated 'winning' record, only high ideological proximity to the current government boosted political support.As a mechanism ensuring accountability of the governors to the governed, elections constitute one of the defining features of democracy. Election results shape government composition and policy outputs, most likely to the advantage of voters who support the winning parties. Previous studies have addressed the gap between electoral winners and losers on various dimensions of political support, from specific institutional evaluations to more diffuse aspects concerning democratic principles and procedures, 1 and found that winners express significantly greater support than losers at each level. However, these works define winners and losers in a static fashion by examining their attitudes at only a single time-point, and employ a dichotomous categorization that does not capture possible variations within each group. In this study, we take into consideration both the past history of winning or losing on present attitudes, and the impact of ideological distance from the government on a commonly used indicator of political support, namely satisfaction with democracy.

The semantics of left and right provide an efficient heuristic to understand and organize political information. Most studies on the left-right schema have focused on established democracies, but the anchoring function that it serves for party systems may be particularly relevant in new democracies where partisanship has not taken root. This article investigates the heuristic value of left and right in East Asian democracies by examining survey data from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Data from Australia and New Zealand are also included for comparative purposes. These countries offer useful contrasts for hypotheses testing because they cover a wide range of democratic experiences and party-system stabilization. The following questions will be addressed: (1) Are publics in East Asian democracies familiar with the left-right dimension? (2) Can the publics locate the positions of political parties and consistently rank them on the left-right spectrum? (3) To what extent do the publics' left-right self-placements affect their party preference? Leftright cognition, consistency of party rankings, and correlations between self-placements and attitudes toward parties for each of the six cases are presented and discussed in detail. Similarities and differences between older and newer democracies in patterns of cognition and party ranking are also discussed.

The left–right schema has long been used in analyzing political cleavages in established democracies. This study applies the schema in a post-communist context by examining the structuring of political attitudes in Slovenia and Croatia. Findings from six public opinion surveys in each country during the 1990s demonstrate that left–right orientations in both countries are consistently influenced by religious beliefs, while an additional dimension focusing on democratization is found in Croatia. Economic issues did not constitute a significant axis of political competition. Changes and continuities in party locations and the basis of vote choice according to party supporters’ left–right placements are also discussed.

Many scholars have investigated the relationship between ideological orientations and mass participation, and there is also a growing number of studies comparing political attitudes and behaviour between electoral winners and losers. This article seeks to bring together these two strands of literature with respect to political participation, focusing on the interaction between citizens’ winner/loser status and ideological distance from their government. Analysis of data from 34 countries highlights the importance of this interactive effect: while previous works suggest that losers have a greater propensity to take part in political activities, it is shown here that this relationship holds true only when losers occupy a position along the left‐right spectrum distant from the government. Furthermore, while the hypothesised interactive effect is empirically confirmed for turnout, the magnitude of its impact is much greater for more costly modes of participation such as contacting, campaigning and protesting

While the topic of life satisfaction and its determinants has drawn increasing attention among political scientists, most studies have focused mainly on macro-level variables, and often overlooked the role of individuals’ attitudes vis-à-vis their governments. The present article attempts to fill this gap by examining whether citizens’ left–right self-placement and ideological distance from their governments exert an independent effect on life satisfaction. Utilizing a dataset spanning a quarter century and containing nearly 70,000 respondents, we demonstrate a curvilinear relationship between ideological orientations and happiness, with self-identified radicals on both ends of the spectrum happier than moderate citizens. Moreover, we show that while propinquity between self-position and government position contributes to happiness, this effect is highly mediated by individual locations along the left–right spectrum: centrists report higher levels of happiness the closer they are to their government, while the opposite is true for radicals. The normative implication of our findings is that moderate governments may present a comparative advantage in enhancing the overall level of happiness of their citizens.