“…This question, furthermore, has become more salient given the increasing challenges to the legitimacy of European political systems since the economic crisis that began in 2008 (Cordero and Simón, 2016; Streeck and Schäfer, 2013). In various European countries, citizens have taken to the streets to protest against austerity politics (Morlino and Quaranta, 2016; Quaranta, 2016) and populist challenger parties have systematically increased their vote share in recent elections (Bermeo and Bartels, 2014; Hooghe and Oser, 2015; Kern et al, 2015; Peterson et al, 2015; Rüdig and Karyotis, 2014; Sloam, 2014). One plausible conclusion from these trends is that policies to alleviate social and economic hardship are considered important elements of citizens’ conception of ideal democracy, at least for a specific portion of the population.…”