Georgios Xezonakis

Citizen Satisfaction with Democracy and Parties’ Policy Offerings

The authors examine the relationship between the variation of policy choices on offer in a party system and citizen satisfaction. Cross-national analyses, based on 12 countries from 1976 to 2003, are presented that suggest that when party choices in a political system are more ideologically proximate to the mean voter position in left–right terms, overall citizen satisfaction increases. The central implication of this finding is that party positions matter for understanding within-country changes in satisfaction.

Satisfaction with democracy and voter turnout A temporal perspective

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.

Can electors combat corruption? Institutional arrangements and citizen behaviour

Studies interested in the cross-national levels of corruption have concluded that specific institutional characteristics drive the aggregate variation. In countries with high institutional clarity and plurality electoral systems, corruption tends to be lower since increased voter monitoring and clarity of responsibility incentivise politicians to deliver virtuous policies. However, the underlying accountability mechanism has never been tested at the individual level. It is still unclear whether (1) voters do place voting weights on corruption, and (2) whether these weights vary in response to aggregate institutional characteristics. In this article, survey data from 23 democracies is used to put the accountability micro-mechanism to this test. While there is some evidence that voters do vote on the basis of corruption, the moderating effect of institutional characteristics is not as strong as previously thought.

Can Elections Combat Corruption? Accountability and Partisanship

Political accountability is a fundamental feature of and a yardstick for evaluating democracy (Powell, 2000). The effectiveness of democracy in keeping those in power in check is wholly relevant in the case of corruption. A large body of research has become engaged with a review of the systemic/contextual factors that can account for variations in the levels of corruption at the aggregate level. A number of country-specific factors have been deemed relevant in this sort of study (see Persson et al., 2003; Kunicova and Ackerman, 2005; Chang and Golden, 2007; Charron, 2011). The argument here is that different institutional arrangements (e.g. constitutional arrangements or the electoral formula) provide differential incentives and opportunities to elites to engage in corrupt behavior and extract rents. Similarly, it provides differential opportunities and incentives to both elites and voters to monitor, and for that matter sanction, corrupt behavior (Charron, 2011).