The Evaluation of the District Legislators’ Performance Affects Citizens’ Satisfaction with Democracy: The Hungarian Example

Abstract

Prior research reveals a relationship between various political system outputs and the citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD). The current study contributes to this line of inquiry and demonstrates that the perception of the district legislators’ overall performance positively correlates with the citizens’ democratic satisfaction. The multivariate analysis of Hungarian panel data from 2018 reveals that the effect is most salient in the case of the winners of the election, and less so for the losers. Results are robust to a variety of changes in the model. The findings indicate that the focus on individual politicians and their work has the potential to increase democratic satisfaction even if representative political institutions such as parties, governments and parliaments are not able to win the citizens’ trust.