(Page 2 of 21) - Satisfaction with Democracy: Do Institutions Matter? authored by Thomassen, Jacques. and Aarts, Kees.

ABSTRACT

According to mainstream normative democratic theory elections in a

representative democracy have two important functions. First, elections allow voters
to determine the political colour of their government, making government
accountable to the judgment of the people. Secondly, elections should produce a
legislature that is representative of the division of political opinion amongst the
electorate. However, there is a certain tension between these two functions. Electoral
systems and more in general democratic systems cannot optimally serve both
functions at the same time. Majoritarian models of democracy are supposed to
optimise the accountability function, consensus models of democracy the
representation function. Previous research showed that people in consensus
democracies are more satisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country
than people in majoritarian democracies. In this paper we try to assess to what extent
this relationship can be explained by people’s perception of the accountability and
representiveness of the political system in their country. Our findings show that
people’s satisfaction with their democracy primarily depends on their perception of
the representation function, and to a lesser degree on the accountability function.
Surprisingly, both the representation and the accountability perception are enhanced
by a proportional-type constitutional design. In contrast, our evaluative measure of
satisfaction with democracy is hardly affected at all by constitutional design – it
appears that at the macro-level satisfaction with democracy is primarily affected by
the age of the democracy one lives in.

Elections as instruments of democracy

Elections are instruments of democracy; they are instrumental in linking the

preferences of citizens to the behaviour of policymakers (Powell 2000). What
exactly ‘linking the preferences of citizens to the behaviour of policy makers’ is
supposed to mean, is the subject of normative theories of political representation and
representative democracy. Political representation, as much as democracy, is an
essentially contested concept (Connolly 1993) and its meaning and implications differ
from one normative view on political representation to the other.

A main point of difference between theories of political representation is the

function of elections. Whereas in majoritarian theories the function of government
accountability is emphasized, proportional theories emphasize the selection of a
representative legislature. This difference is reflected in the choice of electoral
systems, which can be ordered according to the degree of proportionality or
representativeness and to the degree of accountability they tend to produce.

But in the end the performance of electoral systems cannot be assessed by only

examining their mechanics. These mechanics have to be perceived and evaluated by
the voters. It is still an open question to which extent different electoral institutions
also produce different voters’ perceptions of accountability and representativeness.
And what effects does this have for their satisfaction with democracy? These are the

Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the International Conference on Elections and

Democratic Governance, organized by the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, April
10-11, 2005, at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington DC,
September 1-4, 2005 and at the 20

IPSA IPSA World Congress, Fukuoka July 9-13, 2006 . The

authors gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions by the discussants at these meetings,
Shiow-duan Hawang, James S. Mosher and Masahiro Yamada.