The demanding citizen: driven by policy, self‐interest or ideology?

Abstract

AbstractA number of the basic assumptions made by economic theories of democracy are tested by means of a general model of the formation of citizens’ attitudes towards changes in public spending. The test is performed on Danish individual‐level data in combination with city‐level data. The results generally confirm the validity of some of the assumptions of economic theories of democracy: that people have some knowledge of public policies, that they react accordingly, and that some sort of cost benefit calculus is at work because attitudes to some extent are a function of individual self‐interest. On the other hand, the model also points towards mechanisms which are indicative of the limitations of narrow self‐interest‐oriented economic reasoning because people's ideologies seem to be more important than self‐interest measures.One can hardly conceive of a theory of representative democracy‐normative or positive‐which is not based on specific assumption about the relationship between public policies and voter attitudes. This relationship is a two‐way relationship. On the one hand, voter attitudes are assumed to influence public policies either through the voting process or through more direct processes such as, for example, organized pressure. Second, public policies are assumed to affect voter attitudes. If, for instance, public policies change in a direction favoured by voters, it is expected that voters become more satisfied.The purpose of this article is to test the latter relation. The proposition to be tested is:Preferences for higher public spending are negatively related to the level of services, the level of taxation, the increases in services, and the increases in taxation.The test is based on individual level data and on aggregated measures of local spending, service levels and taxation. In order to perform the test a general model explaining voter attitudes will be formulated. The model comprises four major explanatory categories: public policies, private benefit indicators, ideology and political culture indicators.