Democratic Discontent in Old and New Democracies: Assessing the Importance of Democratic Input and Governmental Output

Dahlberg, Stefan; Linde, Jonas; Holmberg, Sören

doi:10.1111/1467-9248.12170

Cited by 129 publications

(126 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…When the authority is able to deliver what the people want, it will enjoy support (Dahlberg et al, 2015). In other words, policy outcome matters.…”

Section: Decision-making Influence and Outcome Favourability As Legitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legitimacy from Decision-Making Influence and Outcome Favourability: Results from General Population Survey Experiments

Arnesen

2017

Political Studies

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Democracies are typically considered more legitimate than other types of regimes because they allow the citizens to participate in the policy decision-making process. Others argue that the policy output matters most, and citizen influence plays a lesser role. This study presents two survey experiments on the micro foundations of these two sources of political legitimacy, thus contributing to an emerging literature that experimentally investigates the effects of democratic procedures in small-scale settings. Respondents who saw the decision going in their favour found the decision much more acceptable than the respondents who preferred another outcome. Conversely, decision-making influence generally did not serve as a legitimising factor among the respondents. This result supports the argument that citizens prefer a stealth democracy where they are minimally involved in democratic decision-making processes. Keywordsinput legitimacy, output legitimacy, survey experiment, stealth democracy Accepted: 11 July 2016 This study presents two survey experiments that aim to uncover the effect of perceived decision-making influence on receptivity to specific decisions. They also measure to what degree the favourability of the outcome matters to the evaluation of the decisions. As such, the study contributes to an emerging political science literature on experiments with decision-making processes and their impact on legitimacy beliefs (Esaiasson et al., 2012(Esaiasson et al., , 2016Persson et al., 2013). These micro-level empirical studies take a novel and complementary approach in examining a central question in studies of democracy that tend to

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“…When the authority is able to deliver what the people want, it will enjoy support (Dahlberg et al, 2015). In other words, policy outcome matters.…”

Section: Decision-making Influence and Outcome Favourability As Legitmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legitimacy from Decision-Making Influence and Outcome Favourability: Results from General Population Survey Experiments

Arnesen

2017

Political Studies

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“…Second and directly related to the contribution of Dahlberg et al (), citizens (and political scientists) disagree about the exact content of democratic representation. This disagreement concerns both the exact focus (e.g., the constituency versus the whole nation) and style of representation (i.e., whether representatives should rather act as trustees or delegates) (Bengtsson & Wass : 55–56).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We further include political interest and demand for policy representation as an independent explanation as well as moderators of the effects of incongruence. In addition, we also include variables that are of standard use in empirical studies on SWD (Norris : 22–25) such as satisfaction with the economy, gender and education (Braun & Tausendpfund ; Dahlberg et al ). While these variables may not be necessary for statistical control, they help us to put the effect sizes of policy incongruences into perspective and facilitate comparability with other SWD studies.…”

Section: Empirical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Multidimensional government-citizen congruence and satisfaction with democracy

Stecker

Tausendpfund

2016

European Journal of Political Research

110

101

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In the first comparative study of multidimensional government‐citizen policy congruence, this article shows that citizens are less satisfied with democracy when their views differ from that of the government on policy dimensions beyond the general left‐right axis. Satisfaction is reduced by a government that deviates on European integration and redistribution and partly also on social lifestyle, immigration and environmental protection. Furthermore, this analysis identifies the level of political interest as central moderator of this relationship. Satisfaction of citizens with stronger interest in politics suffers more when there is a politically distant government. Combining data from the 2010 Chapel Hill Expert Survey and two waves of the European Social Survey, the analysis builds on information on citizen‐government policy congruence of some 45,000 citizens and 31 governments in 15 Western and Central Eastern European countries. The article brings a multidimensional perspective to the study of policy congruence between citizens and governments in a time when the preference structure of parties and citizens has become increasingly complex.

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“…A more recent literature has turned to the output side of the political process. Unlike the input side that determines access to power, the output side deals with the efficiency and effectiveness of regimes (see among others, Dahlberg & Holmberg, ; Dahlberg, Linde, & Holmberg, ; Magalhães, ; Wagner et al, ). This literature distinguishes between outputs that are directly related to material living standards (Bratton & Mattes, ; Mattes & Bratton, ) and issues such as corruption (Booth & Seligson, ; Linde & Erlingsson, ; Seligson, ), impartiality of public bureaucracies (Dahlberg & Holmberg, ; Linde, ), or quality of public policies and their implementation (Magalhães, ), which collectively we label as QoG (Rothstein, ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The quality of government determinants of support for democracy

Boräng

Nistotskaya

Xezonakis

2017

Journal of Public Affairs

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This paper argues that in addition to “what democracies do,” “how democracies do it” produces an independent source of support for democracy. We argue that a high procedural quality of bureaucracy may promote support for democracy by diminishing the likelihood of the occurrence of cognitive dissonance between democracy as an ideal and the experienced. Furthermore, we expect the beneficial impact of a higher quality of government (QoG) to be more visible in younger democracies. We subject this claim to a multilevel empirical analysis with large n and N and across a considerable time span. The analysis reveals that higher QoG is linked with higher levels of diffuse support, and that this effect is stronger in younger democracies. The data are less supportive with respect to the positive impact of QoG on specific support, calling for further research into the matter.

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Democratic Discontent in Old and New Democracies: Assessing the Importance of Democratic Input and Governmental Output

Cited by 129 publications

References 74 publications

Legitimacy from Decision-Making Influence and Outcome Favourability: Results from General Population Survey Experiments

Legitimacy from Decision-Making Influence and Outcome Favourability: Results from General Population Survey Experiments

Multidimensional government-citizen congruence and satisfaction with democracy

The quality of government determinants of support for democracy

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