Having a say or getting your way? Political choice and satisfaction with democracy

Abstract

Citizen satisfaction with democracy is greater when parties offer choices that are congruent with voterpreferences. But are citizens content with simply having a party that represents their views or does their satisfactiondepend on whether that party can also be instrumental in implementing policies? We argue that instrumentalitymoderates the effect of ideological congruence on democratic satisfaction. Combining an analysis of cross-nationalsurvey data with an experimental conjoint design, we find that citizens able to vote for a congruent party with achance of entering government are more satisfied with democracy, whereas congruence without instrumentality hasno such effect.