What Satisfaction with Democracy? A Global Analysis of “Satisfaction with Democracy” Measures

• Author: Viktor Orri Valgarðsson,Daniel Devine
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211009605
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211009605

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211009605

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Introduction

One of the most common measures of public opinion

administered in social science surveys is “satisfaction

with democracy” (SWD). This measure is widely used1

within social science research as an indicator of political

support and the political health of a democratic society

(Aarts and Thomassen 2008; Anderson and Guillory

1997; Bernauer and Vatter 2012; Bol et al. 2018;

Dassonneville and McAllister 2020; Grönlund and Setaïa

2007; Karp, Banducci, and Bowler 2003; Reher 2015;

Zmerli, Newton, and Montero 2007). In media and popu-

lar discourse, a lack of satisfaction with political institu-

tions and the elites which occupy them has been cited as

a cause and consequence of the rise of challenger parties,

the stupefaction of status quo institutions, and the catalyst

of discrete events like the “Brexit” vote and Donald

Trump’s presidency (Kaltwasser and Van Hauwaert 2020;

Knot 2016; McCall 2020). In addition, this survey item

forms the backbone of much of the debate on whether

there is a “crisis of democracy” (or a “legitimacy crisis”)

or merely a myth of one (Ercan and Gagnon 2014; Merkel

2014; van Ham et al. 2017). Despite this vast academic

and public contestation, there is still considerable ambi-

guity about the validity of measures of public political

support and how consistent they are across different sur-

vey programs. As a large body of empirical work relies on

SWD measures either as explanatory or outcome vari-

ables, we set out to provide a foundation for understand-

ing the comparability and validity of the SWD measure

across different survey programs, time, and space.

We assemble a global dataset consisting of essentially

all cross-national survey projects2 that have administered

this question as well as data from 135 national election

study (NES) surveys conducted in eleven European coun-

tries and Australia. Unlike most previous research, which

has primarily relied on single datasets or single waves

within a dataset, we combine all these major cross-national

studies and individual NES into one dataset consisting of

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09605PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211009605Political Research QuarterlyValgarðsson and Devine

2

021

1University of Southampton, UK

2University of Oxford, UK

Corresponding Author:

Daniel Devine, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1

2JD, UK.

Email: daniel.devine@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

What Satisfaction with Democracy?

A Global Analysis of “Satisfaction with

Democracy” Measures

Viktor Orri Valgarðsson1 and Daniel Devine2

Abstract

Asking citizens “the way democracy works” is the basis of a wide literature on the support citizens have for their

political institutions and is one of the most common survey items in political science. Moreover, it is a key indicator for

the purported global decline in legitimacy. Yet, its trends, levels, and dynamics are still debated, and conclusions may

be erroneous. In this paper, we compile a unique global dataset between 1973 and 2018 encompassing all major cross-

national datasets and national election studies in twelve countries to study the dynamics and consistency of “satisfaction

with democracy” (SWD) measures globally. Our results show that while trends and between-country differences in

democratic satisfaction are largely similar, the levels of satisfaction vary substantially between survey projects, and

both trends and levels vary significantly in several widely studied countries. We show that this has consequences at

the individual level: opting for one survey over another may alter our conclusions about the relationship between

key demographics and SWD. Thus, researchers studying SWD should endeavor to consult diverse survey sources

and should be cautious about their conclusions when they do not, especially when it comes to making claims about

changes in SWD over time.

Keywords

satisfaction with democracy, democratic legitimacy, survey measurement

2022, Vol. 75(3) 576–590

Article