Satisfaction with democracy as the evaluation of institutional structure, democratic process and economic performance: a comparative panel study on the sources of political support

Abstract

This thesis analyses the sources of public evaluations of democratic regimes from a comparative perspective, a longitudinal perspective and with a case study of Spain. The main argument of the dissertation is that people’s satisfaction with democracy (SWD) depends to a great degree on the quality of democratic processes and the institutional context. This conclusion does not deny the relevance of the well-documented relationship between the status of the economy and SWD. The importance of the economy is clearly confirmed by the current dissertation. Instead, this thesis argues that economic factors complement other political explanations. As will be shown, the long-term effects of the economy on SWD even depend on the quality of democratic processes and vice versa. This argument is presented in three related studies. In the first study, based on time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) data from 58 democracies between 1990 and 2012 and pooled surveys from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, I show that although electoral proportionality increases SWD, fractionalized party systems and coalition governments decrease SWD. In the second study, based on a twofold longitudinal panel analysis of the Spanish case between 1985 and 2015, I show that despite the negative consequences of prolonged economic crisis, political factors, most notably corruption, are equally relevant to explain the decline of SWD within this context. The third article, based on TSCS panel data from 61 democracies between 1980 and 2014, shows that economic performance and democratic quality are equally important explanations to account for both cross-national and cross-time differences in SWD and that both factors are interrelated in their effects on SWD.