Citizen Satisfaction With Democracy and Parties' Policy Offerings

The authors examine the relationship between the variation of policy choices on offer in a party system and citizen satisfaction. Cross-national analyses, based on 12 countries from 1976 to 2003, are presented that suggest that when party choices in a political system are more ideologically proximate to the mean voter position in left-right terms, overall citizen satisfaction increases. The central implication of this finding is that party positions matter for understanding within-country changes in satisfaction.