Cross‐National Analyses of Satisfaction with Democracy and Ideological Congruence

Abstract

This article examines ideological ties between citizens and parties in power and its impact on satisfaction with democracy in eight consolidated democracies during the late 1990s. Two main propositions are tested: the winner/loser explanation focuses on the post‐election individual attitudes toward an incumbent government, whereas the congruence explanation underlines the proximity between the voters’ ideological tendencies and the policymaking positions taken by parties. The measure of the ideological proximity improves the existing measure, namely the winner/loser status, that explains the relationship between the political institutions and citizens’ attitude toward political systems. The ordered logit analyses with cluster standard errors of the CSES survey and CMP data set suggest that as the congruence between voter and policy positions rises, satisfaction with democracy also increases.