Diffuse Support for Democracy

Abstract

The indicator “satisfaction with democracy” suffers from a blurred distinction between, in the terminology of Easton’s seminal model, diffuse and specific support. Thus, increasing dissatisfaction with a given democracy may well, but need not, imply renunciation of democracy as a normative order. The strong correlation between an individual’s evaluation of the current economic situation and his or her level of satisfaction with democracy is reflected in highly volatile trends of opinion, as is the manifest interaction between political dissatisfaction and periods of intense domestic conflict and crisis. Time sequences of the indicator “satisfaction with democracy” show, at least for Western and Southern Europe, “that this indicator of perceived efficacy is sensitive to short term economic and other conditions and is therefore much more volatile than are attitudes of diffuse legitimacy” (Morlino and Montero, 1995: 238).