Understanding Satisfaction with the Way Democracy Works: Democracy versus Bureaucracy

Abstract

The present study is focusing on system factors related to the input side of the democratic system, i.e. the electoral dimension, as well as factors related to the out-put side, i.e. the quality of government. Hence, we will investigate to what extent different election system characteristics as well as degrees of policy representation (in terms of ideological congruence between voters and representatives) and the presence of effective, professional and impartial governmental institutions are related to citizens’ satisfaction with the way democracy works. We use data from CSES (www.cses.org) on individual voters and party system characteristics together with data on governmental institutions from the QoG-institute (www.qog.pol.gu.se). Overall our results indicate that factors like government effectiveness is of greater importance for citizens´ satisfaction with the way democracy functions, compared to factors like ideological congruence on the input side. Impartial and effective bureaucracies matter more than representational devices.