DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.14995305
title: REPLICATION MATERIAL to The Indirect Effect of Electoral Rules on Citizens’ Satisfaction with Democracy. A Comparative Study (Papp 2022, Swiss Political Science Review)

description: Papp, Zsófia (2022) The Indirect Effect of Electoral Rules on Citizens’ Satisfaction with Democracy. A Comparative Study. <i>Swiss Political Science Review</i>; 28(1): 1-20, First published, 17 December 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12497Although <i>satisfaction with democracy</i> (SWD) is sometimes used in the study of support for incumbent authorities and the political system, of the evaluation of government performance (Canache et al., 2001), the discrepancy between democratic norms and the outputs of the political system (Curini et al., 2012), and of attitudes towards policy outputs (Grönlund & Setälä, 2007), <i>it is most widely considered an indicator of evaluating democratic performance</i> (Norris, 1999). Irrespective of what citizens may think democracy is, low levels of democratic satisfaction are a sign of its weakening legitimacy (Anderson et al., 2005). To manage the behavioural consequences of dissatisfaction (André & Depauw, 2017; Grönlund & Setälä, 2007) we must understand the contributing factors and mechanisms. In the focus of this article are electoral rules, and their effects on democratic satisfaction.The effects of electoral rules are overarching. They determine key political system characteristics such as the number of parties, the structure and stability of governments, and how accurately political opinions are represented in the legislature. Arguably, some electoral rules perform better in creating a link between citizens and legislators. Others produce more proportional election results. If these implications are important to citizens, then we can expect that electoral rules contribute to explaining differences between countries in the levels of SWD. For example, in electoral systems with a stronger link between legislators and citizens people may feel more represented, and therefore be more satisfied with democracy. Importantly, it is not realistic to assume that electoral rules <i>directly</i> affect SWD. Hence, if we wish to understand electoral system effects, we have to look at mediation mechanisms. This study focuses on the <i>indirect effects</i> of electoral rules on SWD through two routes of mediation: (1) the legislators’ constituency orientation, and (2) the proportionality of election results.Relevantly, electoral rules play a role in how we see representative democracy, what is expected of representatives, and how their performance is evaluated. In candidate centred electoral systems, where voters have the opportunity to not only choose between parties but candidates too, the legislators’ performance is assessed along the lines of what they do in office, and how well they represent the interests of their constituencies. Re-election seekers are motivated to advertise their achievements to make sure voters are informed about their efforts. Thus, the electoral connection between citizens and legislators is more prevalent in electoral systems where legislators do not come in ‘package’ with the party but may be individually held accountable. This study argues that in such countries heavier constituency orientation translates into higher levels of citizens’ SWD.When studying the effect of electoral rules one cannot neglect the proportionality of election results. Especially so, because constituency orientation and proportionality may often be developed only at each other’s expense: electoral rules promoting constituency orientation often perform worse along the proportionality dimension. The relationship between proportionality and democratic satisfaction has already been advanced in the scholarship (see for instance Blais et al., 2017; Plescia et al., 2019). Under proportional representation (PR), the perceived justness of the system and the representation of minority opinion borrows citizens a feeling of representation. Contrarily, in majority systems, due to the disproportional distribution of legislative mandates, losers and minorities may not be represented according to their weight in society, which depresses their satisfaction.Although a great many studies investigate SWD, surprisingly there is only limited – although influential – effort to empirically connect the various aspects of electoral systems and democratic satisfaction. Farrell and McAllister (2006) argue that by ‘offering greater choice’ to voters a preferential vote increases citizens’ SWD. Aarts and Thomassen (2008) find that, although to a lesser degree than that of the representation function of PR, the accountability function of the elections in majority systems increases satisfaction. Similarly, Norris (2000) argues that the clear choices that majority systems offer generates greater satisfaction than PR. Using a nuanced operationalisation of personalised politics, Renwick and Pilet (2016) find no evidence of an increasing SWD after adopting more personalised electoral rules. Although their data may not be entirely suitable to discern the connection between electoral system change and SWD (as the authors themselves acknowledge), they take an important step forward in the study of electoral system effects.Building on the literature of the so-called winner-loser gap, the paper further argues that the citizens’ political preferences affect how they evaluate the importance of constituency orientation and proportionality. It is theorized that both constituency orientation and the proportionality of election results are more important to citizens <i>not</i> voting for government parties. While constituency representation makes sure that the interests of the constituency are looked after irrespective of the winner’s party affiliation, proportionality ensures that losers may also have enough power to influence public policy.The analysis combines data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Candidates Survey and covers 24 elections from 14 European countries. The multilevel structural equation model (SEM) suggests two results. On the one hand, what majority and some mixed-member electoral systems gain through increasing constituency orientation, they lose to disproportional election results. On the other hand, open and flexible lists perform better in increasing satisfaction than closed ballots. Importantly, the analysis reveals a winner-loser gap in how constituency representation and proportionality affect democratic satisfaction. As expected, both implications have more weight for how the losers of the elections evaluate democratic performance.