Attitudes towards democracy and the mechanisms of voting intermediation

Abstract

In this paper we study how some individual political attitudes might affect substantially how different citizens face the electoral process and the corresponding flow of political information, producing different types of voters and citizens. Our main question is: are critical citizens (Dalton, 2004; Norris, 1999) or disaffected democrats (Torcal, 2002 and 2007) more responsible citizens, having a more active role in searching for information, obtaining more heterogeneous sources of information, and controlling better, as a result, incumbent representatives? Based on data from the Comparative National Election Project (CNEP), first, we construct three different typologies of citizens based on some of the most well know political attitudes —support for democracy, democratic satisfaction, and political disaffection— and, second, we analyse how the quantity and plurality of exposition to political intermediation are related with these typologies and the level of individual political knowledge.