Replication Data for: Satisfaction with Democracy: When Government by the People brings Electoral Losers and Winners Together

The last decade has witnessed the rise of populist parties and a number of actors that question liberal democracy. Many explanations of this rely on dissatisfied citizens. We ask in this paper whether and how institutions allowing citizens to participate in policy-making affect differences in democratic satisfaction within varying representative contexts as well as between electoral winners and losers. To do so, we first develop a measure of sub-national direct democracy and then use it together with extensive survey data to investigate how direct democracy is associated with citizens’ evaluation of their democratic system. We conclude that direct democracy is not generally related to more satisfied people but rather closes the ‘satisfaction-gap’ between electoral winners and losers. In contrast to previous research, we demonstrate that this mechanism holds across different representative systems.

过去十年间，民粹主义政党与诸多质疑自由民主制的行为体纷纷崛起。对此现象的诸多解释均以公民不满情绪为核心依据。本文旨在探讨：允许公民参与政策制定的制度，是否以及如何在不同代议制语境下，以及在选举获胜者与失利者之间，影响民主满意度的差异。为此，我们首先构建了次国家级直接民主（sub-national direct democracy）的量化测度指标，随后结合大规模调查数据，探究直接民主与公民对本国民主制度的评价之间的关联。我们的研究结论显示：直接民主总体上并不会提升公民的整体满意度，反而会缩小选举获胜者与失利者之间的“满意度差距”。与既往研究不同，本文证明这一作用机制在不同代议制语境下均成立。