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Explaining Political Support in Context

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Citizens and Democracy in Europe

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology ((PSEPS))

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Abstract

This chapter tests the main expectations derived from institutional and performance theories on changes and cross-national differences in democratic satisfaction and trust. Applying hierarchical models on survey data on thirty-one European countries between 1995 and 2017, it disentangles the role of power-sharing institutions and ideological distance, quality of government, economic performance and inequality in explaining between- and within-country variations in our two evaluative dimensions of political support, i.e. satisfaction and trust. Moreover, it assesses conditional explanations studying whether growth in political support depends on average positive contextual conditions and whether the effect of changing contexts varies over time. The chapter provides a broad analysis of the origins of political satisfaction and trust, providing findings that shed new light on the role of systemic factors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, Università di Siena, Siena, Italy

    Sergio Martini

  2. Department of Sociology and Social Research, Università di Trento, Trento, Italy

    Mario Quaranta

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  1. Sergio Martini
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  2. Mario Quaranta
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Correspondence to Mario Quaranta .

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Martini, S., Quaranta, M. (2020). Explaining Political Support in Context. In: Citizens and Democracy in Europe. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21633-7_5

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