Politicians, Elections, and Satisfaction with Democracy

Abstract

The study of democracy is a vast field of political science. More recently, there is a renewed interest in understanding what might cause stable democracies to backslide or to resist decline. This critical moment in time, in which liberal democracies are now one of the least common regime types in the world, serves as a backdrop for the focus of this thesis: politicians’ assessments of electoral processes and the way democracy works. Politicians are particularly important for democratic stability. They can be central in the process of democratic resistance or decline because of their influence over the views of citizens, or if elected, their decision-making power within political institutions. Because of this, it is both timely and imperative for researchers to (re-)examine processes and institutions in democratic countries, like electoral processes, and what politicians think of them. Given the prominent role politicians have in democratic systems, this thesis presupposes that we can better understand the way democracy works by studying politicians directly, by considering what they think of the working of democracy, as well as examining how they engage with and think about electoral processes. However, while there is extensive research on citizens’ democratic satisfaction, there is less consideration of politicians’ attitudes and feelings about how democracy is working in their country. As such, this article-based thesis poses the following broad research question with respect to politicians: what are the determinants of politicians’ democratic satisfaction and their perceptions of the electoral process? Since elections are core to the democratic process, this thesis considers different aspects of the electoral process and how they might impact politicians’ democratic satisfaction as a starting point. In doing so, the three articles in this dissertation establish several theoretical and empirical contributions to the broader study of democracy, as well as the narrower fields of satisfaction with democracy (SWD), electoral processes, electoral management bodies (EMB), and politicians’ behaviours. Some of these contributions include its consideration of whether election-related determinants influence politicians’ SWD, deepening our understanding of how politicians’ perceptions of electoral processes and EMB design preferences are influenced by other election-related determinants, and the first study to use a conjoint experiment to assess EMB preferences. The findings in the three articles indicate that politicians generally want democracy and elections to function in accordance with classic democratic ideals.