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First published online September 9, 2014

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Satisfaction with democracy and voter turnout: A temporal perspective

Lawrence Ezrow [email protected] and Georgios XezonakisView all authors and affiliations

Volume 22, Issue 1

https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068814549335

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Abstract
References
Biographies
Supplementary Material

Abstract

Numerous studies conclude that countries in which citizens express higher levels of satisfaction with democracy also tend to display higher levels of voter turnout in national elections. Yet it is difficult to draw causal inferences from this positive cross-sectional relationship, because democracies feature many historical, cultural, and institutional differences that are not easily controlled for in cross-sectional comparisons. We apply an alternative, temporal approach to this issue by asking the question: Are over-time declines (increases) in aggregate levels of satisfaction within democracies associated with increases (declines) in levels of voter turnout within these democracies? Our temporal analysis of this relationship in 12 democracies over the period 1976–2011 reveals a pattern that is the opposite of that suggested by previous cross-sectional studies: namely, we find that over-time increases in citizens’ satisfaction with democracy are associated with significant decreases in voter turnout in national elections in these countries.

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Biographies

Lawrence Ezrow is a Professor of Government at the University of Essex, UK. His research interests include political representation and parties’ election strategies, and his articles have been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, World Politics, and other journals.

Georgios Xezonakis is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg and a Research Fellow at the Quality of Government Institute. His previous work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies and other journals.

Supplementary Material

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