The gap between ideal and reality
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2021-06-24
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en
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Abstract
Legitimacy is crucial for democracy’s existence. It signifies the extent to which the government is
accepted by citizens. This thesis contributes to the area of perceived legitimacy and considers what role
citizens’ expectations of an ideal regime play for their satisfaction with democracy (SWD). Two groups
were compared: those that are committed to democracy as an ideal, democrats, and those that are not,
non-democrats. From literature on legitimacy, three sources of legitimacy can be derived: input,
throughput, and output. It is argued that democrats care about democratic processes of participation and
representation and the quality of the government process (input and throughput), while non-democrats
care more about the outcome of the process (output). By means of multiple linear regression, the
importance of input, throughput and output legitimacy is tested, and the relative importance of these
sources is compared between groups. Results show that each of these sources have a significant effect
on SWD. It is also shown that feeling that voting has a difference (input) is significantly more important
for democrats’ SWD than for non-democrats. Furthermore, for the group of non-democrats it is revealed
that evaluation of government performance (output) matters most and for democrats it is feeling that
one’s views are represented (input) that has the largest impact on SWD. These results suggest that
citizens’ expectations of the regime have an impact on SWD, which provides many opportunities for
future research.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen