Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008 “On ... · Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008...

1

Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008 “On Dissatisfied Democrats”

Hans-Dieter Klingemann Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung

First draft Please do not cite or quote

Colloquium Series Joint Seminar hosted by the Department of Government and Social Relations

and the Sydney Democracy Initiative University of Sydney

Sydney, 24 May 2012

2

5/14/2012 Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008

“On Dissatisfied Democrats”

Hans-Dieter Klingemann Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung

The Problem

The political history of modern Europe since the early 20th century has focused on Europeans’

support of democracy as a form of government. Democracy was challenged by the Russian

Revolution in 1918 and the rise of communism in several parts of Europe. After that the Great

Depression stimulated fascist movements that took hold and transformed many West and East

European countries (Bermeo 2003). Spain and Portugal remained under fascism’s grip even after

Western democracies were victorious in World War II. Then, the Cold War seemingly lead to a

communist monolith in East Europe.1

Throughout this period, political culture research argued that in order to persist

democracies required a supportive and allegiant public (Almond and Verba 1963, Dalton and

Welzel in this volume). Criticism of democracy or performance of the democratic regimes was

often regarded as synonymous with anti-democratic ideologies of the extreme left or right.

Especially during the Cold War era, the hallmarks of a good democrat were unquestioning

loyalty and allegiance to anything called democratic.

Results of other studies in this volume signal that the content of democratic political

culture has been changing from the model offered in The Civic Culture (Almond and Verba

1963) and research of this era. While support of democracy as a form of government is dominant

in contemporary Europe, many citizens have become less satisfied with the way democracy is

developing in their countries (Klingemann 1999; Dalton 2004). In 1999 Pippa Norris announced

the advent of the “critical citizen”. Some time ago David Easton (1965, 1975) had already argued

that for analytical reasons a distinction should be made between support of a political regime and

support of its political authorities. Klingemann (1999), Dalton (1999) and others have

demonstrated empirically that ordinary citizens tend to make this distinction, too. Thus, citizens

who support democracy as a form of government or principle can either be satisfied or

dissatisfied with the performance of that regime’s individual or collective actors. This finding

3

may come as a surprise to those who are skeptic about the political sophistication of ordinary

citizens. The rising levels of criticism of the performance of democratic regimes can be

explained by rising levels of political information and political cognition (Inglehart 1970;

Inkeless 1975; Gouldner 1979) and by the sudden weakening of the black and white norms

governing public opinion formation after the end of the Cold War (Fuchs and Klingemann 1995).

In her study of the “Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited” Norris (2011) has

discussed what impact a rise of critical citizens might have on democratic support and

legitimacy. Her insights in the consequences of a lag between public aspirations and how

democracy performs are profound and inspiring.

We build on these insights. In this chapter we suggest a simple and straightforward

typology distinguishing between democrats that are “satisfied” or “dissatisfied” with the

performance of the democratic regime in their own country. We start with a conceptualization

and operationalization of democrats and non-democrats and describe the levels of democrats in

the West and East European countries for two periods of time. The first period relies on surveys

fielded around 1999 (T1), the second period on surveys taken around 2008 (T2). Results will

allow us to empirically conclude whether the proportion of democrats is stable, growing or

declining between these two periods of time in Europe, its two major parts and in any one of the

43 individual countries included in our study. Second, we discuss citizens’ evaluation of the

performance of the democratic regime in their own country and distinguish between those who

are satisfied and those who are dissatisfied with that performance. As in the case of the

democrats we report proportions of citizens dissatisfied with the performance of their democratic

regime and changes over time in the various regional contexts. The location of respondents on

these two dimensions allows us, third, to separate “dissatisfied” and “satisfied” democrats. This

puts us in a position to, fourth, tackle the question of how dissatisfied democrats differ from

satisfied democrats. The two groups of democrats may differ on a large number of

characteristics. For this reason we focus on a set of civic attitudes where – because both groups

are democrats - we expect to find no differences. Results show that our expectations are not met

entirely. Dissatisfied democrats differ from satisfied democrats by a particular type of civic

attitudes. We propose an explanation why this type of civic attitudes does not satisfy the “no-

effects-hypothesis”. Finally, we explore value orientations of satisfied and dissatisfied democrats

focusing on postmaterialist values. We conclude that dissatisfied democrats as compared to

4

satisfied democrats show a higher proportion of postmaterialist value orientations. There is

reason to believe that the dissatisfied democrats may develop into a political force pushing the

European issue agenda in a postmaterialist direction.

Answering all these questions may help to redefine the role of political culture in

contemporary democracies, and transform our images of the cultural prerequisites of a well-

functioning democracy.

A Data Base to Answer Questions Empirically

This analysis is concerned with support of democracy and satisfaction with the

performance of democracy in Europe. To examine orientations toward democracy among

European publics requires that we find national surveys that meet three conditions. First, the

surveys must carry valid and reliable measures of (a) support of democracy as a form of

government, (b) evaluation of performance of democracy, (c) civic attitudes, and (d) value-

orientations. Second, we want to include as wide a group of European countries as possible. This

will allow us to examine the variation of attitudes among the established democracies in the

West (including several Third Wave democracies) and the attitudes of post-communist East

European publics. Third, because we want to assess change over time, we need survey data for at

least two time periods.

These conditions are not easy to meet. This is particularly true for valid and reliable

measures of civic attitudes. Fortunately, a set of such measures is available in the surveys fielded

by the European Values Study (EVS) and the World Values Survey (WVS).2 These surveys

provide an unparalleled database to carry out cross-national and cross-time comparisons in

Europe. As in all secondary analysis, however, we are limited to the indicators available, but the

EVS/WVS is the best resource available for our purposes.

There is no agreement on the boundaries of Europe. We opt for a broad definition that

includes all countries that are self-declared and accepted members of the Council of Europe

(CoE). Currently the Council of Europe knows 47 member countries.3 The EVS/WVS provides

surveys from 43 CoE countries. The surveys have been in the field at two periods of time. In the

first period most surveys were carried out around 1999, in the second period interviewing took

place around 2008. We can rely on 86 surveys and a total of 117,890 interviews. There are 20

5

countries from West Europe, and 23 countries from East Europe. Table A1 in the appendix has

full information on the nations included and dates of fieldwork.

We had to be pragmatic in assigning countries to our two major groups. Both, the set of

West European and of East European countries are rather heterogeneous. Some may question the

validity of assigning Turkey or Malta to West Europe; others may dispute that the Transcaucasus

belongs to East Europe. However, in contrast to West Europe all East European countries share a

post-communist past and most of the West European countries have been established

democracies for a long time. We also had to be pragmatic in defining the two time periods. As

mentioned above most of the surveys were conducted in 1999 and 2008; however, several

surveys were fielded at a slightly different time (Table A1). To avoid clumsy description we will

refer to the two time periods as T1 (circa 1999) and T2 (circa 2008). On average the time

difference between T1 and T2 is roughly 9 years. However, in the West differences range from

less than 7 years (Turkey, 81 months) to almost 12 years (Switzerland, 143 months), and from 6

years (Albania, 77 months) to almost 12 years (Georgia, 140 months) in the East. These

differences are important in many respects. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, for example, had

become independent from the Soviet Union for barely five years when the T1 surveys went in

the field. Soviet times were much further away, for example, in Moldova. However, we will not

attempt to analyze the impact of specific situational or historical factors. Rather, we are

interested in broad trends of support of democracy, performance of democratic regimes, civic

attitudes, and value orientations. We assume that those beliefs and values are the result of long

term socialization processes and they should, for this reason, be less affected by short-term

events.

It is an open question whether the political attitudes of the respondents are shaped by type

of political regime. There are good reasons to expect that, for example, support of democracy,

confidence in institutions or participation in elections might be affected by regime type. To be

able to relate regime type and political attitudes we have classified the 43 countries for each of

the two time periods by the combined Freedom House/Polity2 scores as suggested by Hadenius

and Teorell (2005).4 To smooth out erratic scorings we have taken the average of the scores

assigned to each country in the three years preceding the time of fieldwork to describe a

country’s location on this “objectively” defined democracy scale (Table A1). Our analyses (not

shown), find a slight shift from the first to the second period towards a more democratic

6

classification of the political regimes (average scores for all 43 nations on the 0 to 10 scale: T1:

8.19; T2: 8.71). As expected this tendency is more expressed in the democratizing post-

communist countries of the East (+0.82) than among the largely established democracies of the

West (+0.18). The gap between the East and the West is closing as far as the Freedom

House/Polity2 measure is concerned: from a 2.69 point difference at T1 to 1.05 points at T2. At

the country level Croatia moved up the most (+5.17); in contrast, Russia lost more than one point

(-1.11). The low-scorers at T1 also tend to gain the most at T2. Later in the chapter we will

report the correlation of the countries’ Freedom House/Polity2 scores and the proportion of

democrats to provide an estimate of the correspondence between objectively and subjectively

defined measures of democracy.

Support of Democracy as a Form of Government

A large number of political culture studies have demonstrated that most citizens are in a position

to orient themselves towards political community, political regimes, and political authorities as

the most important objects of any political system (Easton 1965; Klingemann 1999; Norris 1999,

2010; Dalton 2004; Linde 2004). Taking up these distinctions, we first want to measure

generalized support of democracy as a form of government or regime type. We assume support

of a democratic regime exists when citizens prefer democracy over autocracy as a form of

government. These preferences are measured by the following two questions:

(1) “I am going to read off some things that people sometimes say about a

democratic political system. Could you please tell me if you agree strongly,

agree, disagree or disagree strongly, after I read each of them?

Democracy may have problems but it’s better than any other form of

government.”

(2) “I am going to describe various types of political systems and ask what you

think about each as a way of governing this country. For each one, would you

say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of governing this

country: Having a democratic system?”

This approach to measure support of democracy subjectively is not undisputed. It is

assumed that most ordinary citizens who express a preference for democracy on questions like

7

these do not really understand the meaning of democracy as a concept (e.g. Inglehart 2003,

Schedler and Sarsfield 2007; Moreno and Welzel in this volume). On the other hand, evidence

generated by open interviewing, shows that citizens from across the world associate meaningful

attributes with the concept of democracy such as freedom, rights, liberties, free elections or

social benefits (Dalton, Shin and Jou 2006). Nevertheless, it stands to reason that political

conceptualization and political knowledge are unequally distributed. Thus, it would be helpful to

measure different levels of understanding of democracy similar to what Converse (1964) had

proposed for levels of ideological conceptualization. Our data base does not include open-ended

questions about the meaning of democracy. For this reason we are unable to further refine our

measure for support of democracy this way.

In contrast to democratic orientations, an autocratic orientation is inferred from responses

to the following two items:

(3) “I am going to describe various types of political systems and ask what

you think about each as a way of governing this country. For each one,

would you say it is a very good, fairly good, fairly bad or very bad way of

governing this country?

Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and

elections.”

(4) “Having the army rule the country.”

The meaning of these two items is pretty straightforward. Factor analysis (not presented) shows

that the four items have strong loadings on the first principal component with opposite signs in

the expected direction. This allows us to construct a democracy-autocracy index by adding the

scores of the two democracy items, the two autocracy items and subtract the latter from the

former.

The democracy-autocracy index runs from -6 (autocrats) to +6 (democrats). The index

distinguishes different levels of intensity to which democracy or autocracy are supported. We

will use this property of the index when analyzing the degree to which support of democracy is

embedded in a broader set of democratic attitudes by correlation measures.

We describe “democrats” broadly as citizens that prefer democracy over autocracy

(scoring +1 to +6 on the democracy-autocracy index). We base their proportion on the total

8

number of respondents of the country surveys. This provides a more realistic picture of the

distribution of support of democracy in the various countries. However, this decision implies that

all the rest of the respondents end up as “non-democrats”. As shown in Table 1 this group

consists of very different types of respondents such as autocrats, the undecided, and respondents

that could not be classified by the democracy-autocracy index because of missing data on one or

more of the four constituent items. Among them the autocrats are the by far smallest and the

respondents that could not be classified because of missing data the by far largest subset in this

group. However, all these respondents share the characteristic that they do not show unequivocal

support of democracy as required by our index. This heterogeneous composition of the non-

democrats is not a matter of concern because we focus on the democrats and they are properly

defined.

= = = Table 1 goes about here = = =

The figures in the top panel of Table 1 are based on the unweighted cumulated cases of

national samples representing the 43 European countries. Thus, small countries such as

Luxembourg count as much as the big ones, such as Russia. By comparison, the bottom panel of

Table 1 presents the averages of the separate country estimates. The averages of the country

means (bottom panel of table1) are largely the same as the means based on the cumulated cases

of the national samples (upper panel of table 1) because sample sizes for each country are

roughly the same. This is true for the group of all 43 European countries (“Europe”) as well as

for the two sub-groups of the 20 West European and 23 East European countries. For example,

the 67.8 percent democrats in the upper left-hand corner of Table 1 are based on the unweighted,

cumulated surveys that were in the field at T2. The figure of 68.5 percent democrats in the lower

left-hand corner of Table 1 is calculated as the average of the mean percentage of democrats in

our 43 countries. For all practical purposes the slight deviation of the two estimates can be

neglected. With one exception we will report findings that are averages of results generated at

the level of the individual country survey following the logic displayed in the lower left-hand

corner of Table 1.

On average the countries of Europe show a level of support of democracy of roughly 70

percent at both periods of time. On the country level the proportion of subjectively defined

9

democrats squares rather well with the more objectively defined Freedom House/Polity2 index

(T1: r=.726; T2: r=.583).

Support levels are substantively higher among West European (about 80%) than among

East European countries (around 60%). Denmark, Norway, Greece and Iceland show more than

90 percent democrats at both periods of time. At T1 and T2 Moldova, the Ukraine, Russia and

Bulgaria do not reach the 50 percent mark. Only slight changes can be observed for the three

regions over the last period of about nine years. On average the decline amounts to -3 percent

points – a little less in the West (-2.6) than in the East (-3.3). At the country level Luxembourg

shows the greatest increase in levels of democrats (+14.8) among the West European countries

and Ireland (-23.9) suffers the greatest decline. Russia and Croatia mark the endpoints among the

East European countries with the democrats winning 10.7 percent points in Russia and losing

17.5 percent points in Croatia (Figure 1; Table A2).

= = = Figure 1 goes about here = = =

In summary, citizens in most countries of Europe express high and stable levels of

support of democracy as a form of government. Levels reach about 80 percent in the West and

about 60 percent in the East; the correlation over time is very high and reaches an r of .83. The

result reflects the attraction of democracy as a regime meant to protect liberty aspirations and

foster equality. It may, however, also reflect the lack of a viable rivaling regime. In this case

support of democracy would follow the reasoning of one of our democracy items - democracy

may have problems but it’s better than any other form of government – a dictum ascribed to

Winston Churchill.

Performance Evaluations of Democracy and the Dissatisfied Democrats

Ultimately democracy rests both on support of its general principles and on the evaluation of the

democratic regime’s performance. Citizens may well be predisposed to support democracy

because they are dedicated to liberty and political equality. Congruence of generally accepted

values and norms with the key principles of a democratic system provides legitimacy for

democracy as a form of government. Results presented above have just shown that in Europe

10

democracy as an ideal enjoys high and stable support in the first decade of the new century.

Thus, there are no indications that we confront a general crisis of legitimacy of democratic

regimes (Habermas 1973, 1975). This does not preclude that citizens may want to alter or change

particular democratic institutions because they come to the conclusion that in other democratic

countries the same functions are performed better by institutions of a different design. However,

such changes would probably not endanger a democratic regime’s legitimacy rather than

strengthen it.

Performance evaluation is a second major way to assess a democratic regime. Such evaluations

reflect how a democratic system functions in practice (Linde 2004). Performance evaluations

turn negative when citizen demands and the capacity of the democratic regime to satisfy these

demands are out of balance. If democratic regimes – despite changing governments - do not

deliver acceptable policy outcomes over longer periods of time – including economic growth and

social security – citizens that support democracy in principle may well become dissatisfied and

contemplate alternatives. However, in order to become a threat to the democratic regime

consequences of negative performance evaluations have to reach the system level. Citizens must

conclude that bad performance is caused by the democratic organization of their political system

and not by lacking competence of the authorities. A strong positive correlation between support

of democracy as a form of government and negative performance evaluations could signal that

consequences at the system level can actually be observed.

In the next section we suggest a measure of performance evaluation of democracy,

discuss the distribution of negative performance evaluation, look at the relation of democrats and

negative performance evaluation, and define “satisfied” and “dissatisfied” democrats for the

further analysis.

Performance Evaluations of Democracy

We measure performance evaluations of democracy by the following widely used indicator:5

“On the whole are you very satisfied, rather satisfied, not very satisfied or not at

all satisfied with the way democracy is developing in our country.”

11

We dichotomize responses by counting “very or rather satisfied” responses as “positive” and

“not very or not at all satisfied” responses as “negative” performance evaluation. In the

following we highlight the negative performance evaluation. As in the case of the democrats we

base the proportion of citizens with negative performance evaluations of democracy on the total

number of respondents of the respective country survey.


The average of the mean proportion of negative performance evaluations is rather stable

for all 43 European countries. It is slightly above 50 percent at both periods of time (T1: 52.5%;

T2: 50.8%).6 The seeming stability on the European level hides a gap between the West and East

European countries. At T1 on average citizens of West European countries showed 35.2 percent

negative performance evaluations while the same was true for more than two thirds of the

populace of the East European countries (67.6%). This situation changed significantly at T2. The

average proportion of negative performance evaluations increased by 5.9 percent points in the

West and decreased by -8.4 percent points in the East. The West still shows a lower level of

citizens with negative performance evaluations at T2. However, the East-West gap has come

down from 32.4 to 18.1 percent points.


Figure 2 presents results at the country level. There are six countries with rather stable

levels of negative performance evaluations that exceed two thirds of the population at both

periods of time, all of them East European (Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina,

Croatia, Moldova) and five countries where this proportion has only been a third of the

population or less at T1 and T2, all of them West European (Switzerland, Denmark,

Luxembourg, Norway, Malta). Otherwise the correlation signals low stability over time at the

country level. The coefficient reaches little more than half the size of the one measuring the

stability of the proportion of democrats (democrats: r=.83; negative performance evaluation:

r=.48). Levels of negative performance evaluation declined most in Azerbaijan (-40.2) in the

12

East, and Turkey (-34.4) in the West. In the West they showed the highest growth in Portugal

(+38.0), and in Serbia in the East (+26.1). (Table A3)

It is tempting to speculate about reasons for the enormous decrease of negative

performance evaluation of democracy in countries like Azerbaijan or Turkey. There are doubts

whether the evaluation describes how democracy functions in one’s own country (AT1). It seems

more likely that the evaluation relates to the current political regime however classified. In

Azerbaijan, for example, the real gross domestic product per capita in constant 1990 US-Dollar-

prices increased by 252 percent from T1 to T2 based on the T1 figure (Teorell, Samanni,

Holmberg, and Rothstein 2011). More generally, we observe a high and negative relation

between GDP per capita and negative performance evaluations the country level (T1: r= -.78;

T2: r= -.57). Thus, it seems reasonable to propose that in these and other cases (e.g. Armenia and

Russia) a positive regime performance in the economic area has caused the decline of negative

performance evaluation. In many East European countries citizens have experienced visible

improvements in their living conditions between T1 and T2 and they attribute this achievement

to their political regime – no matter what its democratic credentials.

The Relation of Democrats and Negative Performance Evaluation of Democracy

Research performed during the Cold War period has shown a rather high association of

support of democracy as an ideal and performance evaluation of democracy (Fuchs et al. 1995).

This relationship has weakened after 1990. With the threat of communism withering away

citizens felt free to criticize their democratic regimes for perceived lack of performance. Taking

into account this development of negative relations between support of democracy and

performance evaluation may no longer mean that the persistence of democratic regimes is at

stake.

Results show that the relation between the two indicators does not reach a level of

significance < .001 in 38 out of 43 countries at T2, an increase of 4 countries as compared to T1.

Significant positive correlations between proportion of democrats and negative performance

evaluations have been found in Belarus (T1, T2), Georgia (T2), Azerbaijan (T1), and Moldova

(T1). In these countries democrats are criticizing their autocratic regimes. The old Cold War

pattern of significant positive relations between support of democracy as an ideal and

performance evaluation of democracy are still visible in Germany (T1, T2), Austria (T1),

13

Luxembourg (T1), Malta (T1), Poland (T1, T2), Bulgaria (T1), and the Czech Republic (T1)

(AT4). This is consistent with the general Almond and Verba (1963) framework of allegiant

democratic citizenship. More than anything else, however, our current results confirm that the

relationship between the two variables is mostly insignificant. This does not signal that negative

performance evaluations have a significant spillover threatening democratic structures.

Satisfied and Dissatisfied Democrats

The indifference between support of democracy as an ideal and performance evaluation also

means that no statistical objections can be raised when combining the two measures. Our index

construction defines dissatisfied democrats as respondents who support democracy as a form of

government and who evaluate the performance of democracy in their own country negatively.

Likewise, satisfied democrats are defined as respondents supporting democracy as an ideal and

evaluating the performance of democracy in their own country positively. In the following we

focus on the group of dissatisfied democrats.7

The proportions dissatisfied democrats are presented in Table 3.8 The overall proportion

of dissatisfied democrats in Europe hovers around 33.7 percent at T2 and 35.7 percent at T1.

Development over time shows a slight decrease between the two periods of time (-2.0).

However, as the pattern of negative performance evaluation, this overall picture hides differences

between the two parts of Europe. There is a gap in levels of dissatisfied democrats between East

and West. In West Europe the proportion of dissatisfied democrats is lower than in East Europe

at both points in time. At T1 the proportion of dissatisfied democrats reached 43.5 percent while

it reached only 28.0 percent in West Europe. After about nine years this gap has closed

significantly from 14.5 percent points at T1 to 2.9 percent points at T2.


Change is also clearly visible at the country level. The pattern underscores the different

dynamics described for the two regions. Dissatisfied democrats are on the rise in 14 West but

only in 4 East European countries (Table A5).


14

Why is such a sizeable part of the democrats dissatisfied with the way democracy

develops in their own country? And why does their proportion go up in the old democracies of

West Europe while it is going down in the new democracies of East Europe? In the preceding

section we have related the proportion of negative performance evaluation with the development

of the economy. A similar mechanism seems to be at work when it comes to the performance

evaluations of dissatisfied democrats. Satisfied democrats tend to live in countries with higher

levels of GDP (T1: r=.79; T2: r=.75) while lower levels of GDP characterize countries where we

find higher proportions of dissatisfied democrats (T1: -.57; T2: -.18). This is, as we have argued

before, consistent with a general model where economic and political modernization go hand in

hand (Welzel, Inglehart and Klingemann 2003).

However, the time trends in West and East suggest that another dynamic must also be at

work. In the established democracies, citizens are becoming more skeptical of government

performance — even over the short span of a decade. Rapid rise of formal education, the decline

of the rural population and the development of mass communication have been suggested as

social forces driving a process of individual modernization (Inkeles 1975), cognitive

mobilization (Inglehart 1970) and the emergence of a culture of a critical discourse (Gouldner

1979). Thus, in advanced industrial democracy “Citizens have become more demanding and

more critical towards politicians and parties.” (Fuchs and Klingemann 1995: 436). This relates

both to the policy agenda pursued by governments and to the governments’ efficiency to tackle

political problems. In the new democracies of Eastern Europe, on the other hand, improved

government performance in core policy areas tends to increase support of the democratic process

and decreases the proportion of dissatisfied democrats.

How Do They Differ? Civic Attitudes and Dissatisfied Democrats

We now turn to the question of how dissatisfied democrats differ from satisfied

democrats. This question is important because the answer may have different consequences for

the persistence of representative democracy. Negative consequences are expected if dissatisfied

democrats turn their back to democracy as a form of government. However, dissatisfied

democrats could also trigger positive effects. As mentioned before they may identify weak

15

institutions of existing democratic regimes early on and in doing so strengthen these regimes’

adaptive capabilities to better meet future challenges.

There are a large number of characteristics that may potentially differentiate between

satisfied and dissatisfied democrats ranging from social-structural to psychoanalytical

characteristics. All these characteristics deserve attention. For reasons of space we will not

attempt such a comprehensive analysis. To make our task more feasible we turn the question

around. We start with selecting a set of civic attitudes that have been suggested as important

correlates of the concept of democracy in previous research. And because both the satisfied as

well as the dissatisfied democrats are democrats we expect that the two groups should not differ

on these characteristics.

Civic attitudes as correlates of the concept of democracy

Civic attitudes are basic for the legitimization of a democratic regime. Freedom and

equality (Sartori 1987), the mutual recognition of citizens as free and politically equal instills

norms of reciprocity. Such norms are a precondition for the functioning of a democratic political

community. More specifically, Putnam (1993) has stressed the importance of civic engagement

and social networks to generate norms supportive of political cooperation. Klingemann et al.

(2006) have specified “interpersonal trust”, “acceptance of deviant behavior”, “rejection of

violence”, “political motivation” and “protest behavior” as important correlates of support of

democracy. Welzel and Klingemann (2011) propose a similar set of attitudes: “civic power”,

“participation in civic actions”, “tolerance of non-conformity”, “civic efficacy” and “civic trust”.

We expect to find a positive relation of civic attitudes and support of democracy. The more

widespread civic attitudes and the closer their association with the concept of democracy the

greater the likelihood of a solidly anchored political culture that is conducive to democracy.

The selection of civic attitudes for our analysis is severely restricted by the availability of

adequate indicators provided by the surveys at hand. From the available surveys we were able to

construct eight indicators related to social and political values, democratic institutions, and the

predisposition of citizens to participate politically (Easton 1965, 1975; Dalton 1999; Fuchs

2007). Indices composed of more than one variable have been checked for dimensionality. To

ease comparison we have rescaled all indicators to express civic attitudes on a scale running

from low (1) to high (10). A detailed overview of the questions used is documented in Table A6.

16

Three civic attitudes are related to social and political values: law abidance, ethic

tolerance, and individual trust. Peaceful political cooperation depends on the acceptance of the

rule of law. The law abidance index is composed of two questions asking whether it is justified

or never justified to claim government benefits one is not entitled to or to cheat on taxes.

Political cooperation is easier when citizens can count on tolerance of a wide range of social

norms. In our case tolerance emphasizes ethic tolerance that is operationally defined in terms of

a possible justification of “divorce” and “abortion” – rights that are, under certain conditions,

already legally accepted in all countries under study. Interpersonal trust is a major principle that

governs the relationships of citizens (Putnam 1993; Kaase 1999; Newton 2007; Zmerli and

Newton 2008). Newton (2007: 343) defines trust “… as the belief that others will not

deliberately or knowingly do us harm, if they can avoid it, and will look after our interest, if this

is possible.” There is no doubt that political cooperation or the division of political labor is

helped by people trusting each other. One can dispute, however, whether interpersonal trust

should be regarded a value or just a personal predisposition.9

Two of the eight civic attitudes relate to democratic institutions or structures: confidence

in parliament and confidence in order institutions. We have explored the statistical

dimensionality of the following three items measuring confidence in parliament, in the police

and in the army.10 We have kept confidence in parliament separate from the two other indicators

for theoretical reasons. Further analysis speaks in support of this decision. The parliament is one

of the key institutions of representative democracy. It has been frequently observed that

confidence in the parliament has declined in a large number of countries (Dalton 2004; Norris

1999; 2010). This leads us to expect lower levels of confidence in parliament at T2 as compared

to T1. It is equally important for the democratic regime that its law enforcement institutions are

respected and that the coercive power of the state is regarded is considered legitimate by its

citizens. The index confidence in order institutions combines orientations towards the police and

the army. Confidence in order institutions and confidence in parliament can be interpreted both

as generalized support of key democratic structures - such as the parliament - and as an

evaluation of the performance of these institutions as collective actors. Thus, the conceptual

status of these questions is somewhat ambivalent. Our results seem to support a performance

oriented interpretation. This does not preclude, however, that citizens who have experienced a

successful working of democratic structures over a long period of time may also be inclined to

17

interpret confidence in key democratic institutions – such as the parliament - as necessary

attributes of a democratic regime despite of a short span of negative performance.

Finally, we were able to measure three civic attitudes related to participation in the

democratic process. Citizen participation in the democratic process is a prerequisite of the

functioning of representative democracy. Political motivation is a major predisposition to

participate politically. Our index summarizes responses to two questions. The first asks the

respondent to evaluate the importance of politics in her or his own life; the second question asks

how often one discusses politics with friends. Competitive elections are the representative

democracy’s major mechanism to distribute legitimate power. Without citizens turning out to

vote this mechanism would not function. Our indicator measures vote intention, not actual

voting. The interpretation of results has to keep that in mind. In addition, we must point out that -

unlike at T1 - at T2 respondents were shown a list of parties to choose from. Showing a list of

parties that compete for the vote may have caused an over-reporting of vote intention because it

is easy to recognize and pick a party one might probably want to support. Protests have become

part and parcel of the democratic political process and thus an important indicator of non-

electoral political participation. Our index measures protest potential and combines responses to

a question asking whether one (a) has already signed or would sign a petition, and whether one

(b) has already or would attend a lawful demonstration. These non-institutionalized modes of

expressing demands are today frequently used by citizens in countries where political and civil

rights are not restricted. Barnes, Kaase et al. (1979) were the first to describe the emergence of

these forms of protest behavior that by now have become part and parcel of democratic politics.

Today citizens use non-institutionalized forms of action because these forms offer their own

possibilities for attaining political goal – not because they are dissatisfied with conventional

forms of actions (Fuchs and Klingemann 1995: 432).

Levels of civic attitudes and support of democracy

We have argued that high levels of civic attitudes are helpful for the democratic process

because they support political cooperation. The more widespread civic attitudes the higher the

probability that a democratic regime is anchored in a rich soil of democratic values and beliefs.


18

At both points of time, overall and in the two regions, we found relatively stable

distributions of civic attitudes. Measured on a ten-point scale overall support for law abidance

showed the highest levels (T2: 8.7, T1 8.5), followed by vote intention (T2: 7.6, T1: 6.9) and

confidence in order institutions (T2: 6.1, T1: 5.8). Confidence in parliament (T2: 4.7, T1 4.6) and

interpersonal trust were trailing behind (T2: 3.8, 3.5) leaving political motivation (T2: 4.9, T1

4.9) and protest potential (T2: 4.9, T1: 5.3) with distribution levels in between. An additive index

representing the average level of these eight civic attitudes by country reflects this high degree of

stability over time (T2: 5.7, T1: 5.6, r=.83).


The results presented in Figure 4 indicate a clear East-West divide in levels of civic

attitudes. Of the 19 countries that, at T2, score above the mean, 17 are West European. 21 of the

countries ranking below the mean are East European. This East-West divide was also visible at

T1 and by now it has even slightly increased (difference at T1, West: +0.72, T2, West: +1.03)

over time (Table A7). This result is in line with core assumptions of socialization research

showing that it takes generations to start and sustain attitude change.

Levels of constraint of civic attitudes and the concept of democracy

Civic attitudes can only fully develop their supportive and stabilizing function for a

democratic political culture when they are linked to the concept of democracy in the minds of the

citizens. Citizens have to know what goes with what and why (Converse 1964). As in other areas

of knowledge this does not happen automatically in the area of political culture, too. The co-

occurrences must be experienced and remembered by the individual. To conclude that the quality

of the democratic process improves because civic attitudes and support for democracy go hand in

hand comes as a result of political learning.

We use the number of significant positive correlations at the .001 level as an indicator for

the degree to which civic attitudes are linked to the concept of democracy.11 Relationships are

analyzed at the country level. For each period of time we look at 43 countries at the European

level amongst them 20 West and 23 East European countries. Thus, each civic attitude can

19

potentially reach 43 (20, 23) significant positive correlations. To ease comparison between East

and West we express the number of significant positive correlations as a proportion based on the

total number of possible correlations.


We first explore patterns of constraint between civic attitudes and the democracy-

autocracy index by inspecting the proportion of significant positive associations for each civic

attitude. Thus, we are not looking at the average strength of the correlations. These are quite low

and range from r=.117 (vote intention T1) to r=.214 (protest potential T1).

At the European level ethic tolerance ranks highest at T2 (79%), followed by four other

civic attitudes reaching more than 50 percent of a total of 43 significant positive coefficients -

protest potential (74%), law abidance (67%), political motivation (54%) and interpersonal trust

(51%). In contrast, vote intention (44%), confidence in parliament (30%) and confidence in order

institutions (7%) show a lower degree of constraint at T2 (>50%). Compared to T1 the number

of civic attitudes with a higher degree of constraint (<50%) has increased by one. Interpersonal

trust is added to the list. Vote intention (44%/23%), confidence in parliament (30%/23%) and

confidence in order institutions (7%/2.3%) have a lower degree of constraint at both periods of

time. Overall results show a growing level of constraint between civic attitudes and the concept

of democracy at the European level with civic values and the inclination to participate politically

clearly in the front. In contrast, the two indicators measuring confidence in institutions are much

less associated with democracy as a form of government as originally expected.

We observe a clear East-West difference in levels of constraint. With the exception of

confidence in order institutions (5%) all civic attitudes show high levels of association (<50%)

with the concept of democracy in the West European countries at T2. As compared to T1 two

more civic attitudes have passed the greater than 50 percent criteria: vote intention (65%/10%)

and confidence in parliament (55%/45%). Confidence in order institutions (5%/0%) is trailing

much behind at both periods of time. Thus, Western Europe is characterized by a high level of

constraint between a high number of civic attitudes and the concept of democracy.

In the 23 countries of the East we found just one civic attitude correlating significant and

positive in 17 countries (74%) with the democracy-autocracy index at T1: protest potential. All

20

other civic attitudes showed lower levels of constraint (>50%). Thus, even 10 years after the

revolutions “protest” was the only civic attitude associated with the concept of democracy.

However, the situation has changed. A higher number of civic attitudes are linked to the concept

of democracy with a higher degree of constraint at T2. In addition to protest potential, ethic

tolerance (78%/35%) and law abidance (57%/30%) are added to the group of civic attitudes with

a higher degree of constraint (<50%). Furthermore, in all other instances the number of

significant positive correlations has increased over time, too. This means that the East European

countries are catching up as far as the attitudinal correlates of the concept of democracy are

concerned.

Turning from the level of civic attitudes to the country level we have counted the number

of significant positive correlations of civic attitudes and the democracy-autocracy index. For

each country we consider eight civic attitudes for each period of time. Thus, the number of

significant positive correlations can vary between 0 as the minimum and 8 as the maximum. At

T2, 22 countries showed 5 and more significant positive correlations, double the number as

observed in T1 (Table A8). Of the 22 countries with higher levels of constraint (5 and more) 17

are West European; of the 21 countries with lower levels of constraint (4 and less) 18 are East

European. The pattern of change shows that in 23 countries (12 West; 11 East) the level of

constraint has increased, 4 countries show a decreasing level (Romania 2/4; Armenia 2/3; Turkey

2/3; Greece 1/2), and in 16 countries the level of constraint stayed the same (6 West, 10 East).

Figure 5 shows this pattern of change and stability for the various countries in detail. As far as

the East European countries are concerned the figure points to the advanced state of a democratic

political culture in Slovenia, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. It also calls for more

detailed case studies for Greece, Turkey and Malta – all included in the West European group of

countries.


To sum up, the findings in this section show a link between civic attitudes and the

concept of democracy, a substantive divide regarding levels of constraint between East and

West, and an overall increase in levels of constraint across time.

21

Do civic attitudes distinguish between satisfied and dissatisfied democrats?

We have selected the civic attitudes discussed above because they have been proposed as

important correlates of the concept of democracy in previous research work. In our analysis we

have found, however, that the eight attitudes differ in degree of association. At the European

level we have identified ethic tolerance, protest potential, and political motivation as civic

attitudes that are relatively strongly associated with democracy at both periods of time while vote

intention, and confidence in parliament as well as confidence in order institutions in particular,

showed a much lower degree of association.

At the outset we had hypothesized that satisfied and dissatisfied democrats should not

differ in their association with civic attitudes because both groups – by definition - support the

concept of democracy by definition. Taking into account the empirical results above we are no

longer so certain regarding civic attitudes with a low level of constraint such as confidence in

institutions. In addition, the confidence indicators are also measured by survey questions that

lend themselves to differences in understanding by the respondents. As argued before, on a very

general level, the questions might suggest that a democrat should have confidence in parliament

and order institutions because they are indispensable parts of the structural set-up of a democratic

regime. In this case all democrats both satisfied and dissatisfied are expected to show high levels

of confidence (no difference expectation). On the other hand, parliament and order institutions

can also be perceived as important collective actors: The parliament as the law- and policy-

maker; the order institutions as the enforcers of the rule of law. If the latter understanding of the

question is assumed a democrat may well assess the performance of these collective actors as

either positive or negative (difference expectation). The outcome of our analysis shows which of

the two possible interpretations can claim empirical plausibility.

We test our general hypothesis by a logistic regression on the individual level relying on

the unweighted cumulated cases of the national samples.12 The dependent variable contrasts

satisfied democrats (1) and dissatisfied democrats (0). Thus, we predict the proportion of

satisfied democrats. Focusing on the democrats only means that not all cases are included in the

analysis. The non-democrats are excluded. This is no small proportion. On average non-

democrats reach about 30 percent of our two samples at both periods of time (T2 32%; T1 29%).

Their proportion varies greatly across countries ranging from below ten percent to slightly above

22

60 percent (Table A2). The eight civic attitudes introduced earlier are our independent variables.

Their scale values run from 1 (low) to 10 (high).

Since we are interested in the comparison between West and East Europe across time, we

estimate our model at the European level, for West and East Europe, and at both periods of time

(Table 6; Tables A9.1-9.4).


Results show four insignificant predictors - law abidance, ethic tolerance, political

motivation and protest potential - for all regional units and at both periods in time. This part of

the result meets our initial expectation that satisfied and dissatisfied democrats should not differ

regarding their attachment to these civic values. However, the effect of vote intention is slightly

higher for satisfied democrats in East Europe and at T1 in West Europe as well. Interpersonal

trust flatly contradicts our no-difference expectation. The lower the level of interpersonal trust

the higher the probability to be a dissatisfied democrat. We have no easy explanation for this

result. As mentioned before one potential explanation could argue that interpersonal trust should

not be conceptualized as a value because it does not tell us what we ought to do. It may be better

to consider interpersonal trust a social predisposition. This conceptualization leaves open the

question whether an investment in trust pays off (positive evaluation) or does not pay off

(negative evaluation).

Confidence in parliament and confidence in order institutions turn out to support the

performance interpretation of the indicator. Both confidence in institutions and possibly also

interpersonal trust can be regarded as investments in the future based on the expectation that the

institutions or the trusted other will perform well. In this perspective confidence in institutions is

strongly performance driven and has an evaluative core. This is view is supported by the results

of the logistic regressions: The higher the confidence in parliament and in order institutions, the

higher the probability that a democrat becomes satisfied and the other way around.

Patterns of change have implications for a convergence or divergence of a democratic

culture in Europe. Figure 6 shows the marginal effect of confidence in parliament on the

probability of democrats to be satisfied estimated from identical models in West and East Europe

for the two waves of surveys. In West Europe this relationship increases from low to high

23

degrees of confidence and there is almost no difference between the two survey waves. In East

Europe, in contrast, the effect of confidence in parliament becomes much stronger over time. The

proportion of satisfied democrats increases with the increasing performance of parliament. This

indicates that the gap between West and East Europe is slowly closing. The picture is the same

for confidence in order institutions and interpersonal trust, although the effects are much weaker.


Is the probability to become a satisfied democrat caused by a change in the level of

confidence in parliament, or is it caused by a stronger degree of constraint between the

evaluation of confidence in parliament and performance of democracy? We suggest an answer to

this question by breaking down the total effect predicting satisfied democrats into a component

that reflects an effect due to a change in the level of confidence evaluations in T1 and T2, and a

“learning effect” that is reflected in a stronger relationship between confidence in institutions and

the concept of democracy.13 Results show that the increasing attitudinal constraint between civic

attitudes and democracy as an ideal drives a process of convergence in the proportions of

satisfied democrats in East and West. A similar but less pronounced result is obtained for

confidence in order institutions and interpersonal trust.

We believe that this finding contributes to a better understanding of the process of

democratic consolidation in the East European countries. In addition to the implementation of

democratic institutions, and the emergence of a system of interest representation, our result

highlights the importance of the emergence of a democratic political culture. Independent of the

level of performance, and thus independent of effects of distribution of attitudes, the relation

between evaluation of performance and satisfaction with democracy has become stronger over

time in East Europe. Civic attitudes that contain the evaluative core to judge democratic politics

have become more and more interconnected with the concept of democracy.

Dissatisfied democrats and their policy agenda

We have shown that a sizeable part of democrats are dissatisfied with the performance of

parliament and order institutions. What policies should these institutions adopt to appease

dissatisfied democrats and turn them into satisfied democrats? What does it take to make

24

dissatisfied democrats say that they are satisfied with the way how democracy develops in their

own country? We must leave this as an open question to be dealt with in the future because of

the space allotted to this chapter. However, we cannot help but briefly speculate about the type of

policy agenda dissatisfied democrats might want to pursue.

To tap the general direction we consider the postmaterialist value orientation of

dissatisfied democrats. The concept, introduced and developed by Ronald Inglehart (1971, 1977,

1990, 2008), is well known and widely used. In contrast to materialists who give top priority to

economic and security issues, postmaterialists tend to push policies guaranteeing self-expression

(including freedom of speech) and a better quality of life (including environmental protection).

To explore the relation between dissatisfied democrats and a postmaterialist value orientation we

consider (1) the representation of postmaterialists among dissatisfied and satisfied democrats,

and (2) the correlation pattern of dissatisfied vs. satisfied democrats and the materialist-

postmaterialist value-orientation index. The overall results are presented in Table 7 and Figure

7.


Figure 7 shows that on average postmaterialists are overrepresented among the

dissatisfied democrats as compared to the satisfied democrats. Differences between East and

West Europe are small. It must be stressed that there is no underrepresentation of postmaterialists

in the group of satisfied democrats either. Thus, satisfied democrats tend to be postmaterialists

also, but to a smaller extend than their dissatisfied counterparts (Table A9). On the other hand

postmaterialists are strongly underrepresented both among satisfied and dissatisfied non-

democrats (results not shown).

This picture is corroborated by a correlation analysis. The relation between dissatisfied

democrats and a postmaterialist value orientation at T2 shows 29 significant (.05 level) positive

correlations out of a total of 43; 21 of the non-significant coefficients have a positive sign. While

the number of significant positive relations has increased over time the general pattern stays the

same.


25

These first explorations suggest that dissatisfied democrats would push the policy agenda in a

‘postmaterialist’ direction. It seems likely that the productive conflict between “old” and “new”

policies will not wither away.

26

References Almond, G.A. and S. Verba (1963) The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes in Five Western

Democracies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Barnes, S. H., M. Kaase, K. R. Allerbeck, B. G. Farah, F. Heunks, R. Inglehart, M. K. Jennings,

H.-D. Klingemann, A. Marsh and L. Rosenmayer (1979). Political Action. Mass

Participation in Five Western Democracies. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Bermeo, N. (2003) Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown

of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Converse, P.R. (1964) ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in D. Apter (ed.),

Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press. pp. 206-261.

Dalton, R. J. (2004) Democratic Challenges, Democratic choices. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Dalton, R.J. (1999) ‘Political Support in Advanced Industrial Democracies’, in P. Norris (ed.),

Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance. Oxford: Oxford

University Press. pp. 57–77.

Dalton, R.J., D.C. Shin and W. Jou (2007) ‘Understanding Democracy: Data from Unlikely

Places’. Journal of Democracy, 18: 142-154.

Easton, D. (1975) A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support. British Journal of

Political Science, 5: 435-457.

Easton, D. (1965) A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York: Wiley.

Fuchs, D. (2007) ‘The Political Culture Paradigm’, in R.J. Dalton and H.-D. Klingemann (eds.),

The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 161-

184.

Fuchs and Klingemann (1995) ‘Citizens and the State: A Relationship Transformed’, in H.-D.

Klingemann and D. Fuchs (eds.), Citizens and the State. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. pp. 419-443.

Fuchs, D., G. Guidorossi, and Palle Svensson (1995) ‘Support for the Democratic System’, in

H.-D. Klingemann and D. Fuchs (eds.), Citizens and the State. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. pp. 323-353.

27

Gouldner, A.W. (1979) The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. London:

Macmillan.

Habermas, J. (1973) Legitimationsprobleme im Spaetkapitalismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp

(English language edition: Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press 1975).

Hadenius, A. and J. Teorell (2005) ‘Cultural and Economic Prerequisites of Democracy:

Reassessing Recent Evidence. Studies in Comparative International Development. 39:

87-106.

Inglehart, R. (2008) ‘Changing Values of Western Publics from 1970-2006. West European

Politics, 31: 130-146.

Inglehart, R. (2003) ‘How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy – And How do We Measure it?’

PS: Political Science and Politics, 36: 51-57.

Inglehart, R. (1990) Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton N.J.: Princeton

University Press.

Inglehart, R. (1977) The Silent Revolution. Changing Values and Political Styles among Western

Publics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Inglehart, R. (1971) ‘The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-

Industrial Societies. American Political Science Review, 65: 991-1017.

Inglehart, R. (1970). ‘Cognitive Mobilization and European Identity. Comparative Politics, 3:

45-70.

Inkeles, A. (1975) ‘Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries’. Ethos,

3: 323-342.

Kaase, M. (1999) ‘Interpersonal Trust, Political Trust and Non-Institutionalized Political

Participation in Western Europe’. West European Politics, 22: 1-23.

Klingemann, H.-D. (1999) ‘Mapping Political Support in the 1990s: A Global Analysis’, in P.

Norris (ed.), Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Governance. New York:

Oxford University Press. pp. 31–56.

Klingemann, H.-D., D. Fuchs and J. Zielonka, eds. (2006). Democracy and Political Culture in

Eastern Europe. London: Routledge.

Klingemann, H.-D., D. Fuchs, S. Fuchs and J. Zielonka (2006). ‘Support for Democracy and

Autocracy in Central and Eastern Europe’, in H.-D. Klingemann, D. Fuchs and J.

28

Zielonka (eds.). Democracy and Political Culture in Eastern Europe. London: Routledge.

pp. 1-21.

LeDuc, L, R. Niemi, and P. Norris, eds. (2010) Comparing Democracies 3. Sage Publications.

Linde, J. (2004) Doubting Democrats? A Comparative Analysis of Support for Democracy in

Central and Eastern Europe. Oerebro: Oerebro universitet.

Newton, K. (2007) ‘Social and Political Trust’, in R. Dalton and H.-D. Klingemann (eds.), The

Oxford Handbook on Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 342-361.

Norris (2010) Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Norris, P., ed. (1999) Critical citizens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Putnam, R. with R. Leonardi and R. Y. Nanetti (1993). Making Democracy Work. Civic

Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Sartori, G. (1987). The Theory of Democracy Revisited. Chatham N.J.: Chatham House

Publishers.

Schedler, A. and R. Sarsfield (2007) Democrats with Adjectives: Linking Direct and Indirect

Measures of Democratic Support. Afrobarometer Working Paper No. 45.

Teorell, J., M. Samanni, S. Holmberg, and Rothstein (2011) The Quality of Government Dataset,

version 6 April 2011. University of Gothenburg: The Quality of Government Institute,

http://www.qog.pol.gu.se

Welzel, C. and H.-D. Klingemann (2011) ‘Democratic Congruence Re-Established: The

Perspective of ‘Substantive’ Democracy’, in M. Rosema, B. Denters and K. Aarts (eds.) How Democracy Works. Political Representation and Policy Congruence in Modern

Societies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 89-114. Welzel, C., R. Inglehart and H.-D. Klingemann (2003) ‘The Theory of Human Development: A

Cross-cultural Analysis‘, European Journal of Political Research, 45: 871-896. Zmerli, S. and K. Newton (2008) ‘Social Trust and Attitudes Towards Democracy’. Public

Opinion Quarterly, 72: 706-724.

29

Tables

30

Table 1: Democrats as defined by the democracy-autocracy index as a proportion of the adult population (18 years and older)

Europe (43 countries)


West Europe (20 countries)


East Europe (23 countries)


T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) % Democrats* 67.8 70.9 77.5 81.2 59.7 62.2 Undecided 6.9 4.3 4.3 3.2 9.0 5.2 Autocrats 5.0 4.3 4.3 2.5 7.0 5.9 Not classified because of missing data

20.3 20.5 15.7 13.1 24.2 26.8

Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% N 63,895 54,495 29,131 25,065 34,764 29,430 % Democrats** 68.5 71.5 78.6 81.3 59.7 63.0 Std. dev. 15.3 15.2 13.2 10.7 11.0 13.6

*Proportions based on unweighted, pooled individual respondents. **Mean of country-level proportions. Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

31

Table 2: Citizens with a negative performance evaluation of democracy in their own country as a proportion of the adult population (18 years and older)







T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T2 (1999) % Negative Performance Evaluation*

50.8 52.5 41.1 35.2 59.2 67.6

Std. dev. 17.4 20.9 13.9 15.2 15.8 11.1

*Mean of country-level proportions. Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

32

Table 3: Dissatisfied democrats as a proportion of the adult population (18 years and older) by country







T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) % Dissatisfied democrats*

33.7 35.7 32.1 28.0 35.0 42.5

Std. dev. 11.6 12.8 12.5 11.5 10.8 9.7

*Mean of country-level proportions. Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

33

Table 4: Rank order of levels of civic attitudes







T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) Indicators* Law abidance 8.7 8.5 8.9 8.7 8.6 8.4 Vote intention 7.6 6.9 8.1 7.0 7.1 6.8 Confidence in order institutions

6.1 5.8 6.5 6.1 5.7 5.4

Political motivation

4.9 4.9 5.2 4.9 4.7 5.0

Protest potential 4.9 5.3 6.0 6.2 4.0 4.5 Ethic tolerance 4.9 4.9 5.5 5.3 4.3 4.6 Confidence in parliament

4.7 4.6 5.2 5.1 4.3 4.2

Interpersonal trust

3.8 3.5 4.6 4.2 3.1 2.9

*Note: Scale values run from 1 (low level) to 10 (high level) Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

34

Table 5: Levels of constraint. Rank order of the association of levels of civic attitudes and the democracy-autocracy index Europe T2 Europe T1 West Europe T2 West Europe T1 East Europe T2 East Europe T1 79% (34) Ethic tolerance*

79% (34) Protest potential



78% (18) Ethic tolerance







35% ( 8) Ethic tolerance

67% (29) Law abidance

51% (22) Political motivation

80% (16) Political Motivation



30% ( 7) Law abidance



80% (16) Inter-personal trust

55% (11) Inter-personal trust

30% ( 7) Political motivation

30% ( 7) Political Motivation

51% ( 22) Inter-personal trust

35% (15) Inter- persona l trust





44% (19) Vote intention

23% (10) Confidence in parliament

65% (13) Vote intention

45% ( 9) Confidence in parliament

26% ( 6) Vote intention


30% (13) Confidence in Parliament


55% (11) Confidence in Parliament


9% ( 2) Confidence in Parliament

4% ( 1) Confidence in Parliament

7% ( 3) Confidence in order institutions



0% ( -) Confidence in order institutions



N=43 N=43 N=20 N=20 N=23 N=23 *Cell entries are civic attitudes and express the number of significant positive correlations of the civic attitude and the democracy-autocracy index as a proportion of the total number of possible significant positive correlations (43 for Europe, 20 for West Europe, and 23 for East Europe). Absolute numbers of significant positive correlations in parenthesis.

35

Table 6: Predicting satisfied and dissatisfied democrats T2 (Circa 2008) T1 (Circa 1999) Indicators Coefficients Robust

std. error Prob. Coefficients Robust

std. error Prob.

Constant -2.279 .240 0.000 -3.075 .263 0.000 Law abidanve -.024 .021 0.247 .027 .019 0.162 Ethic tolerance .007 .015 0.638 .021 .018 0.237 Interpersonal trust .042 .005 0.000 .037 .007 0.000 Confidence in parliament .267 .021 0.000 .195 .026 0.000 Confidence in order institutions

.111 .017 0.000 .118 .019 0.000

Political motivation -.007 .008 0.367 -.004 .012 0.719 Vote intention .025 .009 0.005 .030 .006 0.000 Protest potential -.013 .013 0.320 .003 .015 0.857 West versus East Europe .362 .167 0.031 1.194 .224 0.000 Pseudo R2: 0.123 0.123 0.147 N of cases 36,593 32,181 Note: Coefficients are from a logistic analysis. Dependent variable scored 0 = dissatisfied democrats, 1 = satisfied democrats. East versus West Europe scored 0 = East Europe, 1 = West Europe. All other variables scored 1 (low) to 10 (high). Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS.

36

Table 7: Dissatisfied democrats and postmaterialist value orientation







Over- and underrepresentation of postmaterialist orientation*

T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999) T2 (2008) T1 (1999)

Dissatisfied democrats

113 115 111 115 114 114

Satisfied democrats 101 102 101 101 102 103 Correlations between dissatisfied democrats and materialism-postmaterialism index (level of significance >.05)**

# significant positive

19 (44%) 12 (29%) 10 (50%) 8 (42%) 9 (39%) 4 (17%

# significant negative

3 ( 7%) 5 (12%) 0 ( - ) 0 ( - ) 3 (13%) 5 (22%)

# insignificant positive

9 (21%) 16 (38%) 4 (20%) 8 (42%) 5 (22%) 8 (35%)

# insignificant negative

12 (28%) 9 (21%) 6 (30%) 3 (16%) 6 (26%) 6 (26%)

N 43 42 20 19 23 23

*Means of country distributions, standardized on the margins. % postmaterialist orientation = 100. T1 missing data for Great Britain. **Satisfied democrats: 0, dissatisfied democrats: 1. Materialist-postmaterialist index: 1 low – 10 high. Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

37

Figures

38

Figure 1: Stability of the proportion of democrats over time

Note: R=.83; y= 8.957 + .833x; b significance p<.000. N=43 Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

39

Figure 2: Stability of proportion of negative performance evaluation over time


40

Figure 3: Stability of proportion of dissatisfied democrats over time


41

Figure 4: Stability of levels of civic attitudes over time

Scale of civic attitudes combined: 1-10. Note: R=.83; y= .289 + .974x; b significance p<.000. N=43 Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

42

Figure 5: Stability of levels of constraint over Time

Scores of the scale levels of constraint range between: 0-8. Note: R= .74; y = .215 + .941x; b significance p<.000. N=43 Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

43

Figure 6: Confidence in Parliament and Democratic Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction.

Note: relationships estimated from separate regional logistic models. Source: 1999 EVS/WVS and 2008 EVS/WVS

0.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

0.90

1.00

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Prob

abili

ty fo

r Sat

isfie

d D

emoc

rat

Confidence in parliament

1999 New Dem.

2008 New Dem.

1999 Old Dem.

2008 Old Dem.

44

Figure 7: Degree of representation of postmaterialists among dissatisfied and satisfied democrats over time*

*Average of country distributions that are standardized at the margins. % postmaterialists = 100

90

95

100

105

110

115

120

Europe West Europe East Europe

T2 disdem

T2 satdem

T1 disdem

T1 satdem

45

Appendix

46

Table A1: The European Values Surveys/World Values Surveys of Europe Country Begin of

fieldwork T1 N cases T1

Begin of fieldwork T2

N cases T2

Months t1-t2

Freedom House – Polity2 T1

Freedom House – Polity2 T2

Turkey 09 2001 1206 11 2008 2325 81 6.33 7.58 Portugal 10 1999 1000 05 2008 1553 103 10.00 10.00 Ireland 10 1999 986 04 2008 980 104 10.00 10.00 Finland 09 2000 1015 07 2009 1134 106 10.00 10.00 Luxembourg 07 1999 1161 05 2008 1609 106 10.00 10.00 Sweden 11 1999 1015 09 2008 1174 106 10.00 10.00 Austria 08 1999 1522 07 2008 1510 107 10.00 10.00 Germany 10 1999 2034 09 2008 2051 107 9.58 10.00 Denmark 04 1999 1023 04 2008 1507 108 10.00 10.00 France 03 1999 1615 05 2008 1501 110 9.33 9.75 Netherlands 03 1999 1002 05 2008 1551 110 10.00 10.00 Spain 03 1999 1200 05 2008 1497 110 9.58 10.00 Greece 06 1999 1111 09 2008 1498 111 9.17 9.58 Malta 03 1999 1000 06 2008 1497 111 10.00 10.00 Great Britain 10 1999 969 08 2009 1547 118 9.58 10.00 Belgium 03 1999 1899 04 2009 1509 121 9.58 9.50 Iceland 06 1999 968 07 2009 808 121 10.00 10.00 Italy 03 1999 2000 10 2009 1519 127 9.58 9.79 Norway 10 1996 1127 04 2008 1090 138 10.00 10.00 Switzerland 06 1996 1212 05 2008 1271 143 10.00 10.00 West Europe 1996-2001 25065 2008-2009 29131 Mean 1253 1457 108 9.64 9.81 Std.dev. 358 338 13.3 0.82 0.55 Albania 02 2002 1000 07 2008 1534 77 6.11 8.08 Moldova 01 2002 1008 07 2008 1550 78 7.67 7.28 Bosnia-H. 12 2001 1200 07 2008 1512 79 4.13 6.34 Macedonia 11 2001 1055 07 2008 1493 80 6.92 8.08 Serbia 10 2001 1200 07 2008 1512 81 6.05 7.27 Montenegro 10 2001 1060 11 2008 1516 85 6.05 7.07 Belarus 03 2000 1000 06 2008 1500 99 1.58 1.17 Ukraine 12 1999 1195 07 2008 1507 103 7.17 8.00 Lithuania 11 1999 1018 07 2008 1499 104 9.58 10.00 Estonia 10 1999 1005 07 2008 1518 105 8.67 9.75 Romania 07 1999 1146 04 2008 1489 105 8.67 8.92 Bulgaria 06 1999 999 04 2008 1500 106 8.25 9.33 Hungary 11 1999 998 11 2008 1513 109 9.58 10.00 Croatia 03 1999 1003 04 2008 1498 109 3.75 8.92 Slovakia 06 1999 1331 07 2008 1509 109 8.61 10.00 Czech R. 03 1999 1901 05 2008 1793 110 9.58 9.50 Russia 04 1999 2500 06 2008 1490 110 6.03 4.92 Latvia 03 1999 1013 06 2008 1506 111 8.94 9.22 Poland 02 1999 1095 06 2008 1479 112 9.33 10.00 Armenia 02 1997 1831 06 2008 1477 136 2.22 2.00 Azerbaijan 02 1997 1944 07 2008 1505 137 5.33 5.69 Georgia 12 1996 1924 08 2008 1498 140 5.75 6.86 East Europe 1996-2002 29430 2008-2009 34764 Mean 1280 1511 104 6.94 7.76 Std.dev. 425 70 18.2 2.38 2.45 Europe 1996-2002 54495 2008-2009 63895 Mean 1267 1496 108 8.19 8.71 Std.dev. 390 285 16.4 2.27 2.09

47

Table A2: Democrats as a proportion of the adult population (18 years and older) by country Country T2 (ca. 2008) % N T1 (ca. 1999) % N T2-T1 %-points Albania 63.9 1534 74.9 1000 -11.0 Armenia 58.1 1477 53.5 1831 +4.6 Austria 79.7 1510 88.4 1522 -8.7 Azerbaijan 67.5 1505 65.5 1944 +2.0 Belarus 50.9 1500 52.8 1000 -1.9 Belgium 84.9 1509 81.1 1899 +3.8 Bosnia-Herzegovina

61.6 1512 71.4 1200 -9.8

Bulgaria 47.7 1500 54.5 999 -6.8 Croatia 70.8 1498 88.3 1003 -17.5 Czech Republic 67.2 1793 84.0 1901 -16.8 Denmark 93.9 1507 90.6 1023 +3.3 Estonia 72.6 1518 66.6 1005 +6.0 Finland 78.1 1134 80.0 1015 -1.9 France 88.9 1501 78.2 1615 +10.7 Georgia 62.6 1498 67.6 1924 -5.0 Germany 83.1 2051 87.6 2034 -4.5 Greece 93.5 1498 92.1 1111 +1.4 Hungary 76.9 1513 74.8 998 +2.1 Iceland 92.3 808 94.4 968 -2.1 Ireland 54.4 980 78.3 986 -23.9 Italy 82.9 1519 85.9 2000 -3.0 Latvia 60.2 1506 64.8 1013 -4.6 Lithuania 53.6 1499 54.2 1018 -0.6 Luxembourg 81.4 1609 66.6 1161 +14.8 Macedonia 55.5 1493 56.4 1055 -0.9 Malta 70.4 1497 86.5 1000 -16.1 Moldova 38.6 1550 42.3 1008 -3.7 Montenegro 56.6 1516 69.8 1060 -13.2 Netherlands 84.2 1551 94.0 1002 -9.8 Norway 93.3 1090 93.6 1127 -0.3 Poland 68.6 1479 62.7 1095 +5.9 Portugal 51.1 1553 64.4 1000 -13.3 Romania 50.4 1489 46.1 1146 +4.3 Russia 45.6 1490 34.9 2500 +10.7 Serbia 52.2 1512 68.1 1200 -15.9 Slovakia 69.2 1509 69.7 1331 -0.5 Slovenia 80.2 1366 80.5 1004 -0.3 Spain 78.8 1497 68.6 1200 +10.2 Sweden 74.7 1174 88.8 1015 -14.1 Switzerland 83.0 1271 72.9 1212 +10.1 Turkey 51.3 2325 63.0 1206 -11.7 Great Britain 71.2 1547 67.6 969 +3.6 Ukraine 42.8 1507 46.6 1195 -3.8 Europe Mean 68.5 43 71.5 43 -3.0 Std.dev. 15.3 15.2 8.9 West Europe Mean 78.6 20 81.3 20 -2.6 Std.dev. 13.2 10.7 10.3 East Europe Mean 59.7 23 63.0 23 -3.3 Std.dev. 11.0 13.6 7.8

48

Table A3: Citizens with a negative evaluation of the performance of democracy in their own country as a proportion of the adult population (18 years and older) by country Country T2 (ca. 2008) % N T1 (ca. 1999) % N T2-T1 %-points Albania 77.8 1534 72.1 1000 +5.7 Armenia 49.7 1477 82.5 1831 -32.8 Austria 44.8 1510 24.0 1522 +20.8 Azerbaijan 20.5 1505 60.7 1944 -40.2 Belarus 30.8 1500 51.6 1000 -20.8 Belgium 39.6 1509 50.2 1899 -10.6 Bosnia-Herzegovina

72.3 1512 64.4 1200 +7.9

Bulgaria 87.6 1500 67.9 999 +19.7 Croatia 71.3 1498 80.2 1003 -8.9 Czech Republic 56.6 1793 61.1 1901 -4.5 Denmark 23.1 1507 30.6 1023 -7.5 Estonia 52.2 1518 56.5 1005 -4.3 Finland 41.1 1134 39.4 1015 +1.7 France 59.7 1501 46.4 1615 +13.0 Georgia 53.7 1498 75.5 1924 -21.8 Germany 34.7 2051 24.6 2034 +10.1 Greece 56.0 1498 43.4 1111 +12.6 Hungary 77.6 1513 66.2 998 +11.4 Iceland 51.7 808 31.9 968 +19.8 Ireland 31.4 980 33.6 986 -2.2 Italy 64.1 1519 61.8 2000 +2.3 Latvia 66.6 1506 65.2 1013 +1.4 Lithuania 61.9 1499 65.8 1018 -3.9 Luxembourg 23.4 1609 14.8 1161 +8.6 Macedonia 56.5 1493 80.7 1055 -24.2 Malta 28.9 1497 21.0 1000 +7.9 Moldova 66.6 1550 83.8 1008 -17.2 Montenegro 58.6 1516 59.4 1060 -0.8 Netherlands 43.7 1551 26.3 1002 +17.4 Norway 28.5 1090 14.1 1127 +14.5 Poland 41.6 1479 51.4 1095 -9.8 Portugal 58.3 1553 20.3 1000 +38.0 Romania 53.7 1489 74.2 1146 -20.5 Russia 52.6 1490 84.3 2500 -31.7 Serbia 75.5 1512 26.1 1200 +26.1 Slovakia 52.5 1509 73.2 1331 -20.7 Slovenia 49.4 1366 52.7 1004 -3.3 Spain 41.5 1497 37.1 1200 +4.4 Sweden 27.0 1174 38.0 1015 -11.0 Switzerland 20.7 1271 32.9 1212 -12.1 Turkey 40.2 2325 74.6 1206 -34.4 Great Britain 62.7 1547 38.3 969 +24.4 Ukraine 76.3 1507 76.1 1195 +0.2 Europe Mean 50.8 43 52.5 43 -1.8 Std.dev. 17.4 20.9 17.8 West Europe Mean 41.1 20 35.2 20 +5.9 Std.dev. 13.9 15.2 16.1 East Europe Mean 59.2 23 67.6 23 -8.4 Std.dev. 15.8 11.1 16.9

49

Table A4: Association of proportion of democrats (0/1) and negative evaluation of the performance of democracy in their own country (0/1) by country (non-democrats 0, democrats 1; positive performance evaluation 0, negative 1) Country T2 (ca. 2008) % N T1 (ca. 1999) % N T2-T1 %-points Albania .041 (.107) 1534 -.057 (.073) 1000 Armenia .006 (.824) 1477 .055 (.018) 1831 Austria -.071 (.006) 1510 -.088 (.001) 1522 Azerbaijan -.040 (.121) 1505 .375 (.000) 1944 Belarus .191 (.000) 1500 .319 (.000) 1000 Belgium -.078 (.002) 1509 -.033 (.154) 1899 Bosnia-Herzegovina

.061 (.018) 1512 .080 (.006) 1200

Bulgaria .011 (.677) 1500 -.161 (.000) 999 Croatia .032 (.216) 1498 .038 (.226) 1003 Czech Republic -.058 (.015) 1793 -.087 (.000) 1901 Denmark .040 (.123) 1507 .039 (.212) 1023 Estonia -.018 (.493) 1518 -.016 (.621) 1005 Finland .039 (.193) 1134 -.055 (.077) 1015 France -.048 (.061) 1501 -.009 (.720) 1615 Georgia .224 (.000) 1498 -.005 (.814) 1924 Germany -.121 (.000) 2051 -.142 (.000) 2034 Greece -.012 (.645) 1498 -.039 (.192) 1111 Hungary .071 (.006) 1513 .021 (.513) 998 Iceland -.055 (.117) 808 .031 (.331) 968 Ireland .020 (.536) 980 -.037 (.242) 986 Italy .079 (.002) 1519 -.014 (.520) 2000 Latvia -.055 (.033) 1506 -.071 (.024) 1013 Lithuania -.065 (.011) 1499 .024 (.450) 1018 Luxembourg -.098 (.000) 1609 .015 (.599) 1161 Macedonia -.037 (.152) 1493 .010 (.747) 1055 Malta -.017 (.519) 1497 -.134 (.000) 1000 Moldova .021 (.409) 1550 .111 (.000) 1008 Montenegro -.037 (.154) 1516 .076 (.013) 1060 Netherlands -.037 (.140) 1551 -.041 (.199) 1002 Norway -.012 (.694) 1090 -.018 (.539) 1127 Poland -.107 (.000) 1479 -.135 (.000) 1095 Portugal -.020 (.433) 1553 .007 (.835) 1000 Romania -.020 (.436) 1489 .052 (.080) 1146 Russia -.028 (.285) 1490 .022 (.262) 2500 Serbia -.027 (.299) 1512 -.067 (.020) 1200 Slovakia -.047 (.066) 1509 -.052 (.058) 1331 Slovenia -.068 (.012) 1366 -.074 (.019) 1004 Spain -.068 (.008) 1497 -.026 (.376) 1200 Sweden -.021 (.468) 1174 -.011 (.736) 1015 Switzerland .035 (.207) 1271 .012 (.682) 1212 Turkey .001 (.977) 2325 .089 (.002) 1206 Great Britain .072 (.005) 1547 .078 (.015) 969 Ukraine .038 (.141) 1507 .003 (.909) 1195 Europe sign. correlations 5 (11.6%) 43 9 (20.9%) 43 Sign pos. 2, neg. 3 pos. 3, neg. 6 West Europe sign. correlations 2 (10.0%) 20 3 (15.0%) 20 Sign pos. 0, neg. 2 pos. 0, neg. 3 East Europe sign. Correlations 3 (13.0%) 23 6 (26.1% 23 Sign pos. 2, neg. 1 pos. 3, neg. 3

50

Table A5: Dissatisfied democrats as a proportion of the adult population (18 years and older) by country Country T2 (ca. 2008) % N T1 (ca. 1999) % N T2-T1 %-points Albania 50.5 1534 52.9 1000 2.4 Armenia 29.0 1477 45.1 1831 -16.1 Austria 34.3 1510 20.0 1522 +14.3 Azerbaijan 13.1 1505 48.5 1944 -35.4 Belarus 20.1 1500 35.2 1000 -15.1 Belgium 32.3 1509 40.1 1899 -7.8 Bosnia-Herzegovina

45.8 1512 47.7 1200 -1.9

Bulgaria 41.9 1500 33.3 999 +8.6 Croatia 51.2 1498 71.4 1003 -20.2 Czech Republic 36.7 1793 49.9 1901 -13.2 Denmark 22.1 1507 28.3 1023 -6.2 Estonia 37.5 1518 37.3 1005 +0.2 Finland 32.9 1134 30.4 1015 +2.5 France 52.4 1501 36.3 1615 +16.1 Georgia 39.1 1498 50.9 1924 -11.8 Germany 30.6 2051 19.4 2034 +11.2 Greece 52.3 1498 39.4 1111 +12.9 Hungary 60.9 1513 50.0 998 +10.9 Iceland 47.0 808 30.5 968 +16.5 Ireland 17.6 980 25.6 986 -8.0 Italy 54.6 1519 52.8 2000 +1.8 Latvia 38.8 1506 40.6 1013 -1.8 Lithuania 31.6 1499 36.2 1018 -4.6 Luxembourg 17.4 1609 10.1 1161 +7.3 Macedonia 30.5 1493 45.7 1055 -15.2 Malta 20.0 1497 16.3 1000 +3.7 Moldova 26.2 1550 37.4 1008 -11.2 Montenegro 32.3 1516 23.4 1060 -10.9 Netherlands 36.1 1551 24.3 1002 +11.8 Norway 26.5 1090 13.0 1127 +13.5 Poland 26.1 1479 28.9 1095 -2.8 Portugal 29.3 1553 13.2 1000 +16.1 Romania 26.6 1489 35.3 1146 -8.7 Russia 23.3 1490 29.8 2500 -6.5 Serbia 38.9 1512 32.1 1200 +6.8 Slovakia 35.3 1509 50.0 1331 -14.7 Slovenia 38.3 1366 40.9 1004 -2.6 Spain 31.3 1497 24.9 1200 +6.4 Sweden 19.8 1174 33.6 1015 -13.8 Switzerland 17.8 1271 24.3 1212 -6.5 Turkey 20.6 2325 48.8 1206 -28.2 Great Britain 46.3 1547 27.7 969 +18.6 Ukraine 33.5 1507 35.6 1195 -2.1 Europe Mean 33.7 43 35.7 43 -2.0 Std.dev. 11.6 12.8 12.6 West Europe Mean 32.1 20 28.0 20 +4.1 Std.dev. 12.5 11.5 12.4 East Europe Mean 35.0 23 42.5 23 -7.4 Std.dev. 10.8 9.7 10.2

51

Table A6: Concepts and Measures of Civic Attitudes Concept Measurement and scores (all scores are rescale to a 1 to 10 scale) Value (cultural) level Law abidance (additive index)

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between, using this card. 1) Claiming state (1999)/government (2008) benefits which you are not entitled to; 2) Cheating on taxes Index values: 1 low law abidingness to 10 high law abidingness

Ethic tolerance (additive index)

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between, using this card. 1) Abortion, 2) Divorce Index values: 1 low ethic tolerance 10 high ethic tolerance

Interpersonal trust Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? 1 Can’t be too careful with people (plus dk and na) to 10 Most people can be trusted

Structural level Confidence in Parliament

Please look at this card and tell me, for each item listed, how much confidence you have in them, is it a great deal, quite a lot, not very much or none at all? Parliament 1 low confidence to 10 high confidence

Confidence in order institutions (additive index)

Please look at this card and tell me, for each item listed, how much confidence you have in them, is it a great deal, quite a lot, not very much or none at all? 1) The police; 2) the armed forces: 1 low confidence to 10 high confidence

Process level Political motivation (additive index)

1 When you get together with your friends, would you say you discuss political matters frequently, occasionally, or never? 2 Please say, for each of the following, how important it is in your life? ‘politics’; very important, quite important, not important, not at all Important Index values: 1 low political motivation to 10 high political motivation

Vote intention 1999: If there was a general election tomorrow, which party would you vote for? 2008: If there were a general election tomorrow, for which party on this list would you vote for? 1 no vote intention; 10 vote intention

Protest potential (additive scale)

Now I’d like you to look at this card. I’m going to read out some different forms of political action that people can take, and I’d like you to tell me, for each one, whether you have actually done any of these things, whether you might do it or would never, under any circumstances, do it? 1 signing a petition 2 attending lawful demonstrations Index values: 1 no protest behavior to 10 high protest behavior

52

Table A7: Combined levels of eight civic attitudes by country T2 (ca. 2008) Mean T1 (ca. 1999) Mean T2-T1 difference Rank 2008 Rank 1999 Albania 4.95 5.91 -0.96 41 8 Armenia 5.28 5.50 -0.22 26 20 Austria 5.86 5.88 -.002 16 9/10 Azerbaijan 5.64 5.08 +0.56 21 35 Belarus 5.51 5.02 +0.49 24 36 Belgium 6.12 5.62 +0.50 09/10/11 16/17 Bosnia-Herzegovina 5.22 5.29 -0.07 29/30 26/27 Bulgaria 4.84 5.26 -0.42 43 30 Croatia 5.18 5.29 -0.12 31 26/27 Czech Republic 5.15 5.62 -0.47 32/33 16/17 Denmark 7.55 6.94 +0.62 1 3 Estonia 5.30 5.09 +0.20 25 34 Finland 6.76 6.41 +0.34 5 5 France 6.36 5.66 +0.69 7 14/15 Georgia 5.70 5.23 +0.48 20 31 Germany 6.12 6.00 +0.12 09/10/11 7 Greece 5.53 5.38 +0.16 23 23/24 Hungary 5.14 4.87 +0.27 34 40 Iceland 6.79 6.38 +0.41 4 6 Ireland 6.00 5.88 +0.12 13 9/10 Italy 5.99 5.51 +0.48 14 19 Latvia 5.04 4.92 +0.12 38 38 Lithuania 5.06 4.95 +0.11 35/36 37 Luxembourg 6.12 5.72 +0.40 09/10/11 13 Macedonia 5.82 4.85 +0.97 17 41 Malta 5.74 5.42 +0.32 18 22 Moldova 4.98 4.82 +0.15 39 42 Montenegro 5.15 5.59 -0.44 32/33 18 Netherlands 6.57 6.74 -0.17 6 4 Norway 7.21 6.99 +022 3 1 Poland 5.06 5.28 -0.22 35/36 28 Portugal 5.27 5.27 -0.01 27 29 Romania 4.90 4.74 +016 42 43 Russia 5.22 5.12 +0.10 29/30 33 Serbia 5.05 5.45 -0.40 37 21 Slovakia 5.24 5.66 -0.42 28 14/15 Slovenia 5.71 5.31 +0.41 19 25 Spain 5.87 5.38 +0.49 15 23/24 Sweden 7.27 6.97 +0.30 2 2 Switzerland 6.28 5.82 +0.46 8 12 Turkey 5.58 4.89 +0.69 22 39 Great Britain 6.02 5.85 +0.17 12 11 Ukraine 4.96 5.19 -0.24 40 32 Mean 5.70 5.55 +0.15 Std.dev. .69 .59 .39 West Mean 6.25 5.94 +0.32 Std.dev. .37 .37 .06 East Mean 5.22 5.22 +0.00 Std.dev. .28 .30 .43

53

Table A8: Levels of constraint. Number of significant positive correlations and sum of strength of significant positive correlations of eight civic attitudes and the democracy-autocracy index by country Country T2 (ca. 2008) T2 (ca. 2008) T1 (ca. 1999) T1 (ca. 1999) T2-T1 # of significant

positive correlations Sum of strength of significant positive correlations*

# of significant positive correlations

Sum of strength of significant positive correlations*

Difference of sums of strength of significant positive correlations

Albania 4 .531 0 .000 +.531 Armenia 2 .334 3 .476 -.142 Austria 6 1.360 5 .779 +.581 Azerbaijan 1 .177 1 .121 +.056 Belarus 2 .268 2 .316 -.048 Belgium 5 1.196 5 .975 +.221 Bosnia-Herzegovina

2 .451 2 .316 +.135

Bulgaria 3 .546 3 .462 +.084 Croatia 5 .661 1 .206 +.455 Czech Republic 5 .868 5 .727 +.141 Denmark 5 .807 4 .795 +.012 Estonia 7 .972 2 .478 +.494 Finland 7 1.389 5 .869 +.520 France 7 1.561 7 1.174 +.387 Georgia 3 .489 1 .211 +.278 Germany 8 1.299 2 .416 +.883 Greece 1 .097 2 .342 -.245 Hungary 5 .724 4 .589 +.135 Iceland 6 1.113 5 1.100 +.013 Ireland 5 .825 2 .424 +.401 Italy 6 1.257 6 1.115 +.142 Latvia 3 .463 2 .470 -.007 Lithuania 2 .274 2 .344 -.070 Luxembourg 7 1.229 3 .403 +.826 Macedonia 1 .149 0 .000 +.149 Malta 2 .462 2 .296 +.166 Moldova 2 .224 2 .426 -.202 Montenegro 2 .274 0 .000 +.274 Netherlands 6 1.362 6 1.289 +.073 Norway 7 1.511 6 1.180 +.331 Poland 2 .384 2 .340 +.044 Portugal 5 .961 2 .430 +.531 Romania 2 .276 4 .789 -.513 Russia 1 .127 1 .157 -.030 Serbia 3 .448 3 .569 -.121 Slovakia 4 .640 3 .392 +.248 Slovenia 6 1.202 5 .926 +.276 Spain 5 .735 2 .593 +.142 Sweden 6 1.537 6 1.288 +.249 Switzerland 6 1.080 3 .429 +.651 Turkey 2 .216 3 .850 -.634 Great Britain 5 .996 4 .688 +.308 Ukraine 1 .131 0 .000 +.131 Europe 175 Mean .735 128 Mean . 552 Mean +.183 Std.dev. .458 Std.dev. .361 Std.dev. .308 West Europe 105 Mean 1.049 80 Mean .772 Mean +.278 Std.dev. .420 Std.dev. .341 Std.dev. .355 East Europe 70 Mean .461 48 Mean .362 Mean +.100 Std.dev. .282 Std.dev. .257 Std.dev. .238 *Scores running from 0 (minimum) to 8 (maximum).

54

Table A9.1 Predicting satisfied and dissatisfied democrats in 20 West European countries at T2 (around 2008) Indicators Coefficients Robust

std. err. Prob.

Constant -1.881 .354 .000 Law abidance .010 .031 .747 Ethic tolerance .011 .019 .564 Interpersonal trust .040 .006 .000 Confidence in parliament .306 .029 .000 Confidence in order institutions .061 .024 .010 Political motivation -.026 .011 .019 Vote intention .018 .014 .217 Protest potential -.025 .019 .190 Dependent variable scored 0 = dissatisfied democrats, 1 = satisfied democrats. All other variables scored 1 (low) to 10 (high) Number of observations:19.684; pseudo R2: 0.104

55

Table 9.2: Predicting satisfied and dissatisfied democrats in 20 West European countries at T1 (around 1999) Indicators Coefficients Robust

std. err. Prob.

Constant -1.522 .275 .000 Law abidance -.002 .026 .950 Interpersonal trust .037 .010 .000 Ethic tolerance .001 .022 .951 Confidence in parliament .259 .023 .000 Confidence in order institutions .097 .029 .001 Political motivation -.005 .019 .809 Vote intention .032 .008 .000 Protest potential -.027 .018 .126 Dependent variable scored 0 = dissatisfied democrats, 1 = satisfied democrats. All other variables scored 1 (low) to 10 (high) Number of observations: 17.705; pseudo R2: 0.090

56

Table 9.3: Predicting satisfied and dissatisfied democrats in 23 East European countries at T2 (around 2008) Indicators Coefficients Robust

std. err. Prob.

Constant -2.290 .293 .000 Law abidance -.057 .022 .010 Ethic tolerance .003 .024 .899 Interpersonal trust .043 .007 .000 Political motivation .008 .011 .478 Vote intention .033 .010 .001 Protest potential -.001 .018 .939 Confidence in parliament .220 .027 .000 Confidence in order institutions .169 .016 .000 Dependent variable scored 0 = dissatisfied democrats, 1 = satisfied democrats. All other variables scored 1 (low) to 10 (high) Number of observations:16.909; pseudo R2: .110

57

Table 9.4: Predicting satisfied and dissatisfied democrats in 23 East European countries at T1 (around 1999) Indicators Coefficients Robust

std. err. Prob.

Constant -3.343 .341 .000 Law abidance .046 .022 .035 Ethic tolerance .046 .022 .035 Interpersonal trust .040 .006 .000 Confidence in parliament .135 .037 .000 Confidence in order institutions .142 .020 .000 Political motivation -.003 .016 .824 Vote intention .027 .009 .003 Protest potential .028 .018 .113 Dependent variable scored 0 = dissatisfied democrats, 1 = satisfied democrats. All other variables scored 1 (low) to 10 (high) Number of observations: 14476; pseudo R2: .057

58

Table A10: Do dissatisfied democrats have a postmaterialist orientation? Over- and underrepresentation of a postmaterialist value orientation among dissatisfied and satisfied democrats at T2 and T1 Dissatisfied

Democrats T2 Satisfied Democrats T2

Difference T2 Dissatisfied Democrats T1

Satisfied Democrats T1

Difference T1

Albania 106 100 +6 113 85 +28 Armenia 115 103 +12 127 114 +13 Austria 107 107 +1 124 98 +26 Azerbaijan 88 104 -16 115 72 +43 Belarus 158 84 +74 145 74 +71 Belgium 101 106 -5 116 97 +19 Bosnia-H. 120 79 +41 96 90 +6 Bulgaria 117 124 -7 127 118 +9 Croatia 110 102 +8 110 67 +43 Czech R. 102 117 -15 100 113 -13 Denmark 127 95 +32 105 103 +2 Estonia 122 93 +29 102 108 -6 Finland 125 91 +34 113 96 +17 France 111 103 +8 103 112 -9 Georgia 133 99 +34 116 72 +44 Germany 112 101 +11 115 99 +16 Greece 109 89 +20 108 97 +11 Hungary 112 82 +30 113 95 +18 Iceland 97 107 -10 132 87 +45 Ireland 109 119 +10 109 100 +9 Italy 117 80 +37 108 101 +7 Latvia 114 91 +23 126 105 +21 Lithuania 109 130 -21 116 106 +10 Luxembourg 126 99 +27 138 100 +38 Macedonia 106 98 +8 113 44 +69 Malta 77 115 -38 98 101 -3 Moldova 132 77 +55 127 95 +32 Montenegro 129 80 +49 91 113 -22 Netherlands 107 104 +3 104 102 +2 Norway 104 100 +4 125 100 +25 Poland 106 110 -4 108 117 -9 Portugal 102 124 -22 130 112 +18 Romania 109 96 +13 131 171 -40 Russia 99 119 -20 126 120 +6 Serbia 103 119 -16 121 117 +4 Slovakia 101 126 -25 105 124 -19 Slovenia 108 101 +7 98 108 -10 Spain 110 99 +11 116 106 +10 Sweden 119 108 +11 114 95 +19 Switzerland 124 100 +24 116 107 +9 Turkey 125 84 +41 114 106 +8 Great Britain 111 93 +18 MD MD MD Ukraine 116 119 -3 108 141 -33 Europe 113 101 +12 115 102 +13 Std.dev. 13.5 13.3 23.5 11.8 20.1 23.5 West Europe 111 101 +10 115 101 +14 Std.dev. 12.2 10.3 19.9 10.6 5.9 13.2 East Europe 114 102 +12 114 103 +11 Std.dev. 14.4 16.0 26.7 12.9 26.8 29.5 Cell entries are means of country distributions, standardized on the margins. % postmaterialist orientation = 100. Figures for non-democrats not shown.

59

Table A11: Do dissatisfied democrats have a postmaterialist orientation? Over-time patterns of association of materialist-postmaterialist orientations (1=materialist to 10 postmaterialist) and dissatisfied and satisfied democrats Countries T2 1 satdem vs 0 disdem (based on total

N of democrats) T1 1 satdem vs 0 disdem (based on total N of democrats)

Albania -.017 -.026 Armenia -.080* -.069* Austria .009 -.105* Azerbaijan .059 -.016 Belarus -.254* -.178* Belgium .006 -.099* Bosnia-H. -.097* . 015 Bulgaria .013 .036 Croatia -.018 -.203* Czech R. .095* .069* Denmark -.127* -.011 Estonia -.074* .086* Finland -.144* -.065 France -.060* .036 Georgia -.116* -.057* Germany -.029 -.054* Greece -.078* -.088* Hungary -.068* -.004 Iceland .062 -.150* Ireland -.080 -.034 Italy -.208* -.024 Latvia -.099* -.009 Lithuania .105* .011 Luxembourg -.057* -.145* Macedonia -.059 -.076 Malta .041 .040 Moldova -.146* -.035 Montenegro -.208* .103* Netherlands -.018 .010 Norway .005 -.038 Poland .019 .048 Portugal .069 -.067 Romania -.022 .105* Russia .024 -.013 Serbia .049 -.043 Slovakia .069* .097* Slovenia -.033 .026 Spain -.051 -.074* Sweden -.101* -.108* Switzerland -.091* -.054 Turkey -.136* -.068 Great Britain -.066* MD Ukraine .035 .055 Europe sign. neg. 19; sign. pos. 2 sign. neg. 12; sign. pos. 5 West Europe sign. neg. 10; sign. pos. 0 sign. neg. 8; sign. pos. 0 East Europe sign. neg. 9; sign. pos. 2 sign. neg. 4; sign. pos. 5 *significant at the .05 level.

60

Endnotes 1 Dividing Europe into East and West - as we do in this chapter – is a gross simplification. We

are well aware of finer geographical and historical distinctions. The gross dichotomy is meant to

ease communication and comparison of results. 2 The European Values Study and the World Values Survey are both large scale, cross-national

and longitudinal survey research projects. Detailed information is available at

www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu and www.worldvaluessurvey.org. 3 We were unable to locate surveys for all 47 countries. We miss six, mostly small, countries

(Andorra, the two Cypriot states, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino). Belarus and

Kazakhstan are excluded from membership in the Council of Europe because of human rights

concerns. While the European roots of Kasakhstan can be disputed, Belarus most certainly is a

European country. Survey researchers from Belarus have also participated in most EVS/WVS

waves. Thus, there are good reasons to include Belarus in the analysis. Most important, our study

is not about democracies defined by proper institutional design and democratic tradition. Rather,

we are interested to learn whether Europeans support democracy as an ideal whether or not they

live in a democracy or an autocracy. 4 These authors have shown that an average index, composed of Freedom House scores

(transformed to a 0 to 10 scale) and Polity2 scores (transformed to a 0 to 10 scale) performs

better both in terms of validity and reliability than its constituent parts (Hadenius and Teorell

2005). The data are taken from the Quality of Government Project (Teorell, Samanni, Holmberg

and Rothstein (2011); T1 scores for Yugoslavia and T2 scores for Serbia and Montenegro, are

own calculations. 5 At T1 this question had not been asked in five countries: Norway, Switzerland, Azerbaijan,

Armenia, and Georgia, however, the following question was available: “How satisfied are you

with the way the people now in national office are handling the country’s affairs? Would you say

that you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, fairly dissatisfied or very dissatisfied?” This substitute

question is probably more plausible in the historical context of December 1996 to February 1997

for the three post-communist countries. We have, however, similarly included Switzerland (June

1996) and Norway (October 1996) well knowing that this can be disputed on many counts.

61

6 The small overall decrease (-1.7) seems to be in contradiction to longer term trends presented

by Dalton (2004) and Dalton and Shin (in this volume). However, this finding has to be qualified

by checking both the exact time points and sets of countries. 7 There are missing values regarding the performance question. We add the few respondents with

missing values to the group of satisfied democrats (the “rest”). 8 We base the proportion of dissatisfied democrats on the total number of respondents. 9 This interpretation was suggested by Bernhard Wessels and is gratefully acknowledged. 10 Confidence in the parliament loaded high on this dimension, too. However, we kept the

measure for confidence in parliament separate for theoretical reasons. Further analysis speaks in

support of this decision. 11 Contrary to expectations we also observe some significant negative correlations. However, the

proportion of significant negative correlation coefficients is rather small. It is 3.8 percent at T2

and 4.9 percent at T1. These unexpected negative relationships between civic attitudes and

support for democracy occur in West and East European countries at both periods of time. The

proportion is smaller in the West (T2: 2.5%; T1: 4.4%) than in the East (T2: 4.9; T1: 5.4). 12 This is the only time we use the database as an unweighted file cumulating respondents of the

various country surveys. In all other instances results are based on averages derived from

country-by-country analyses. 13 The method to separate ‘level effects‘ and ‘learning effects‘ (constraint) has been suggested by

Bernhard Wessels and is gratefully acknowledged.

Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008 “On ... · Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008...

Documents

Transcript of Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008 “On ... · Support of Democracy in Europe, 1999-2008...