Exogenous and endogenous determinants of Spanish mayors’ notions of democracy: a multilevel regression analysis

Abstract

A common ground in the literature on elite’s notions of democracy is (1) that leaders’ notions of democracy can be successfully captured by a representative-participatory dimension, and (2) that the way leaders view democracy is paramount to understand their behavior. Taking on an institutional perspective, the most common model combines an endogenous and exogenous origin of leaders’ notions of democracy. The theory assumes that both local institutional arrangements and personal characteristics may have an impact on the way local leaders perceive democracy and behave. However, while some evidence has been found to support the exogenous aspect of this theory (leaders’ ideology influence their notions of democracy), the impact of local institutional arrangements on leaders’ notions of democracy has received more limited empirical support. In this paper we provide a model of endogenous and exogenous factors on local elite’s notions of democracy. In particular, we show that local leaders’ political experience endogenizes the effect of ideology on their notions of democracy and on their support to democratic reforms. We test our model using survey data from a sample of mayors in Spanish municipalities and find empirical support for our model. One of our main findings is that the effect of ideology on mayors’ support for particular views of democracy decreases with political experience.