How do Europeans want political decisions to be taken?
Exploring citizen preferences and their origins across different contexts1
José Luis Fernández and Joan Font
(Institute of Advanced Social Studies, IESA-CSIC)
[email protected]
[email protected]
DRAFT VERSION. ENGLISH UNCORRECTED. DO NOT QUOTE.
Abstract
The dimensionality of citizen preferences and their relationship with relevant variables like education, ideology
and trust have been widely examined. However, we still know very little about where these preferences come
from. Which are the underlying conditions for citizens to consider a determined decision-making procedure
more important for democracy than other? During the last decades, it has been an increasing interest in
comparing different models of democracy: representative, participatory and technocratic. Nevertheless, this
challenging task incorporates the risk of converting this process preferences field into a new “separate table”.
Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to explore whether including the two close concepts of accountability
and responsiveness into the discussion about citizen’s process preferences contributes to shed further light on
the subject.
The European Social Survey 2012 module on Democracy, combined with the core module, represents an
interesting material to explore such questions. The first section of our paper presents a general comparative
overview of how several dimensions of the political process (accountability, responsiveness and direct
participation) are distributed in Europe and how they relate to each other. In the second part, we continue to
analyse the ESS data but focusing only on the four countries where attempts to replicate the Stealth Democracy
findings have already been carried out.
This paper draws the following preliminary findings: first, accountability, reponsiveness and direct democracy
cannot be clearly seen as three cumulative steps in the direction of demanding a more central role of citizens in
democratic politics; second, lack of political trust is more consistently associated with responsiveness than with
accountability, but this pattern is not so clear for direct democracy and, lastly, having left wing ideology is more
consistently associated with responsiveness.
1
Paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Warsaw 29 March-2April 2015. Workshop:
What Citizens Want From Democracy: Popular Attitudes to Existing Political Processes and their
Alternatives.
1. Introduction
The literature about models of democracy is one of the central political
science fields. From normative theory discussing features that different democratic
models have included (Budge, 1996; Held, 2006) to common packages of
institutions that reflect different democratic logics (Lijphart, 1999), this large field
has covered a rich field of several theoretical and empirical domains. Over the last
decades, this debate has been enriched by the incorporation of a public opinion
perspective: which are the democratic models preferred by citizens? Which models
are distinguished by citizens and why do they prefer one or another?
The blooming of this specific public opinion part of the debate incorporates
the risk of converting this process preferences field into a new “separate table”
(Almond, 1988), that creates its own isolate discussions. This could be the case
even if many of its core discussions (e.g., the role of citizens in democratic
systems) are quite similar to others developing in neighboring subjects. Thus, one
of the main goals of this paper is to enrich this process preferences literature with
the incorporation of the analysis of a different albeit important characteristic of
democracy: responsiveness.
We will do this analysis through the data of the 6th wave of the European
Social Survey (ESS), which included an interesting module of questions on
democracy. Since our main mid-term goal will be to establish a dialogue between
these new European data with previously existing national surveys, more
specifically focused on process preferences, we will mostly focus on the four
European countries that have (to our knowledge) this kind of national surveys:
Finland, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The next section of the paper will develop our theoretical arguments and
present some hypotheses. Next, we will present the research strategy, data and
variables to be used through the project (in the present paper and beyond). The
empirical part of the paper will be divided in two sections. In the first one we
2
present a general European overview of the main dependent variables to be used in
the paper. In the second empirical part we focus on the four countries selected and
explore how these variables relate to each other, as well to some central
explanatory variables. A brief conclusion closes the paper summarizing the main
ideas and the future avenues.
2. Theory: Responsiveness and process preferences
One of the common conclusions of the process preference literature is the
confirmation that the classic normative debate between representation and
participation2 is also perceived by citizens. Most citizens perceive these two
components of democracy, as having a certain trade-off between them: most
democracies will have some representation and some participation, but adopt a
specific set of institutions and practices that will give priority to one or the other.
Additionally, most citizens have a more or less coherent personal preference in this
debate (Bengtsson, 2012; Coffee and Michels, 2014; Font, Wojcieszak and
Navarro, 2015; Webb, 2013).
On the other hand, when representation and participation are not presented as
alternative models, but as part of a larger set of alternative models of governance
the public opinion picture gets more blurred. In fact, the explanatory factors of
support to both representative and participatory modes of governance appear as
quite similar in some of the accounts (Ceka and Magalhaes, forthcoming).
This result is not completely contradictory with all the process preference
research, especially when a third expert-stealth-elitist option is also considered.
For example, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002) perceived their Stealth model as
an alternative to both, participation and representation. In fact, the representation
and participation models would share the idea of government based on values and
2
Through the paper we will use “participation”, participatory model” or “direct democracy” as representing
the same basic democratic model where an active role for citizens in policy-making is central.
3
conflict, whereas any expert model would be guided by the idea of a common
good that should by pursued through efficient and impartial strategies3.
The dialogue of this process preference literature with neighboring
democratic debates has been mostly limited to some discussion with the
deliberative-participatory literature (e.g., Neblo et al, 2010; Jacobs et al, 2009) or
with a small part of the political behavior research (e.g., Bengtsson and
Christensen, 2014). However, the dialogue has been quite less common with other
close thematic areas, like the rich literature about responsiveness (Manza et al,
2002; Morales et al, 2015). The focus of this separate responsiveness table is quite
distinct (when and why are citizens heard in the policy-making process? Should
they be heard? Through which mechanisms?), but both share a central common
question: which is the role of citizen preferences in a democracy and how and
when should they be incorporated?
Something similar happens with accountability. Accountability implies
governments who provide explanations to citizens and are controlled by them
through the threat of electing new representatives (Mulgan, 2000). Thus,
accountability also implies a first step towards giving citizens a central role in
democratic procedures4.
Thus, the main goal of this paper is to explore whether including these two
close concepts of accountability and responsiveness into the discussion about
citizen’s process preferences contributes to shed further light on the subject. We
will move in this direction by exploring how three possibilities of enriching the
role of citizens in democratic life relate to each other: accountability,
responsiveness and direct participation.
3
Font, Wojcieszak and Navarro (2015) test this hypothesis for the Spanish case and do not find empirical
support to the idea of a main opposition between an expert model versus a (partially) common
representative-participatory valued led model.
4
Any democratic model gives citizens a central role. We refer through the text to the possibility of
providing them a role, which goes beyond the possibility of electing their preferred politicians.
4
The first option would be that accountability, responsiveness and direct
democracy would simply represent three different steps: from less to more
demanding ways to incorporate citizen voices into policy-making. Thus, a first
step in incorporating citizen voices would be governments providing voters with
explanations of their policies (accountability). Following this logic, a second
larger step would mean that governments do not only explain, but also follow
public opinion in guiding their policies (responsiveness). The final step would be
voters having a direct active role in making policy decisions, for example through
referenda (direct democracy).
A different way of looking at these relationships would be would be to
consider them as alternative strategies. The case of accountability is different
(the voice of citizens is not incorporated, they only receive explanations), but
responsiveness and direct democracy could be considered two different avenues to
incorporate a larger role for citizens, through a more or less active role on their
side. According to this second perspective, one could favor only responsiveness or
only direct democracy (or both of them) as adequate strategies to expand citizens’
role.
Thus, our first research question is how do the preferences for accountability,
responsiveness and direct democracy relate with each other? If some kind of
preferences for democratic models exist, where do they come from? The
relationship between these preferences and variables like education, ideology,
interpersonal trust and political trust have been examined in what we are calling
process preferences literature (Anderson and Goodyear, 2010; Bengtsson and
Mattila, 2009; Coffee and Michels, 2014). However, we still know very little about
how citizens build these preferences. Are they based on their own experience and
satisfaction with representative democracy and/or with their participatory
experiences? Are they based on values such as accountability, responsiveness,
efficiency or based on the expected outcomes of each of them?
5
In this paper we want to focus mostly on the potential role of two such
explanatory variables: ideology and political trust. Bengtsson and Mattila (2009)
identify a clear relationship between left ideology and enlarged support for direct
democracy, a pattern that also appears in the Spanish case (Font and Fernández,
2014)5. However, not all evidence goes in the same direction. For example, Ceka
and Magalhaes (2014) argue for a curvilinear relationship, where radicals (from
left or right) would be generally more supportive to direct democracy at the
European level6
In some West European countries, a similar link between an enlarged
definition of democracy and left wing ideology could be made. Following this
argument, it would be reasonable to expect finding a similar linkage with the other
democratic characteristics (accountability and responsiveness). However, the
diffusion of democratic ideals and practices has followed different trajectories in
each country. This is especially clear in Eastern Europe, where the incorporation of
new democratic practices was the result of the break with their communist past or
in Germany where this diffusion went mostly from East to West following the
same events (Vetter, 2009). In Spain, for example, the use of referenda during the
dictator resulted in a strong left reluctance to them. Only the recent (left leaning)
social movements in favor of a deepening of democracy have resulted in a
reversion of the traditional trend. In sum, ideology is likely to play a role and to be
associated (more in some countries than in others) with deeper democratic models.
The other main concept moving these preferences according to Bengtsson
and Mattila (2009) is desire for change. Those citizens that are more demanding or
more critical towards existing institutions would tend to support new forms of
democracy. The evidence regarding some of these variables is mixed7, but it is
5
The pattern appears at the national level. However, their analysis also includes a local survey that has the
same questions and, at the local level, the association between left ideology and support to participatory
democracy does not reach statistical significance.
6
Their research also shows a surprisingly similar curvilinear relationship in the support to liberal
democracy. This unexpected pattern may suggest that in fact radical citizens tend to give more importance
to any of the democratic characteristics suggested in the questionnaire.
7
About the relationship of education with process preferences see for example Anderson and Goodyear
(2010), Bengtsson and Mattila (2009) or Coffee and Michels (2014).
6
quite reasonable to expect that citizens who trust less the existing institutions
would have a stronger demand in favor of new instruments to limit the autonomy
of politicians.
In sum, our second research question is how much these two variables
(ideology and trust) explain the preference for more or less accountability,
responsiveness and direct democracy.
How do we expect these relationships to work? Our first argument is that
citizens who are more dissatisfied with the actual performance of democratic
institutions will tend to be more supportive of an enhanced role for citizens (i.e.,
responsiveness and/or direct democracy).
H1: we expect to find a larger and more consistent relationship between lack
of political trust with support to responsiveness and direct democracy than with
political accountability.
The shared comparative meaning of left and right concerns issues of
economic and social redistribution. On many other subjects, the specific contents
of these ideological categories are much more country specific. In the realm of
democracy, these contents are the results of the particular national struggles for
democracy.
H2: We do not expect a consistent association between left and right and the
contents considered more important in a democracy.
The next section explains the research strategy we follow to check how much
support these hypotheses receive in the ESS data.
7
3. Research strategy, data and variables.
Combining data and comparing empirical evidence
The sixth round of the ESS represents an interesting material to explore
these questions. In this occasion, the ESS develops a module on issues related to
“Europeans’ understandings and evaluations of democracy” across twenty-nine
countries8. The complete set of variables of the democracy module covers a large
number of concepts about democratic processes and practices such as rule of law,
competition, participation, accountability and equality, among others.
Since the mid-term goal of this research (graph 1) is to jointly analyze this
set of questions in dialogue with the available databases which have more in depth
measurements of process preferences, the second part of our paper will focus
exclusively on those four European countries (Finland, the Netherlands, Spain and
the United Kingdom) where attempts to replicate parts of the Stealth Democracy
thesis have already been carried out9.
Dependent variables:
We have concentrated our attention in a small set of variables among all
those included in the ESS democracy module.
Direct democracy: Referendum
Direct democracy is part of the complex concept of participation used in the
ESS, which includes: (1) everyone (irrespective of their citizenship) should be able
to vote in national elections; (2) voters discuss (in their daily life) politics before
voting and (3) people vote (the most important issues) directly in referendums.
Given that our attention is only focused on the political decision-making
processes, we have chosen the third sub concept described above.
8
N= 54673. The fieldwork period was from
http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/
9
(N = FI, 1442n; NT, 4987n; UK 1353n and SP 2454n)
8/2012
8
to
8/2013.
More
information:
Figure 1. Overall research design (parts I and II included in the paper)
EUROPEAN OVERVIEW
ARTE
esponsiveness
irect democracy
ccountability
ESS DATAANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES WHERE ATTEMPTS TO
REPLICATE STEALTH DEMOCRACY FINDINGS HAVE ALREADY BEEN
CARRIED OUT.
ARTE
EUROPEAN SOCIAL SURVEY 2012
N=54673
SPAIN
THE NETHERLANDS
n=1889
n=1845
FINLAND
UNITED KINGDOM
n=2286
ARTE
COMBINING NATIONAL
“STEALTH DEMOCRACY”
SURVEYS
n=2197
Source: Own elaboration
Accountability: Providing explanations
Accountability can be understood vertically as well as horizontally. The
latter refers to the (4) traditional division of power, while the former may be
measured as follows: (5) governing parties can be (retrospectively) punished in the
next elections; (6) representatives answer, explain and justify (transparently) their
political decisions and (7) the Media provide citizens with reliable information. As
the closest variable to political decision-making processes is the sixth question we
will focus on.
Responsiveness:
Responsiveness (8) consists basically on considering popular preferences in
decision-making processes. On the other hand, responsiveness (9) can be applied
9
to stakeholders, for instance, listening to other governments or particular groups
before taking decisions. In this case, the political decision-making process, the
focus of our study, is present in both variables. Nevertheless, we use only
responsiveness to the citizens because our main focus is precisely on the role of
citizens in democratic policy-making.
All the former variables, except responsiveness, were measured in a 0-10
scale, measuring how important this characteristic is for a democracy. Our
responsiveness variable has been created from a combination of three different
questions10. Descriptive information about all these variables is presented in more
detail in table 1.
Table 1. Participation, responsiveness and accountability at ESS level.
N
Min Max Mean Stdev
Citizens have the final say on political issues by voting directly in referendum
Immigrants only get the right to vote in national elections once they become citizens
Voters discuss politics with people they know before deciding how to vote
54576 0
53484 0
54456 0
10
10
10
8,3 2,065
7,7 2,685
7,4 2,513
Responsiveness to the citizens
Politicians take into account the views of other European governments
53311 0
51717 0
10
10
7,4 3,013
6,4 2,656
The government explains its decisions to voters
The courts able to stop the government acting beyond its authority
The media provide citizens with reliable information to judge the government
Governing parties are punished in elections when they have done a bad job
55383
53921
55373
54639
10
10
10
10
8,9
8,8
8,7
8,5
0
0
0
0
1,738
1,932
1,900
2,046
Source: ESS 2012. Own elaboration.
Independent Variables:
The second part of the paper develops an explanatory analysis, where we
incorporate a set of independent variables often used in the research literature.
10
Responsiveness was originally measured as a categorical variable and responses were coded as follows:
(1) the government should change its planned policies in response to what most people think, (2) the
government should sticks to its planned policies regardless of what most people think and (5) it depends on
the circumstances. Respondents who chose 1 or 2 were asked in the following items about the level of
importance of their respective responses. In order to have the same scale for all the variables, we created a
new variable in a 0-10 scale in which the value 0 means that maintaining the planned policies regardless of
public opinion is extremely important for democracy; the value 5 includes those who consider that sticking
or changing planned policies is not important at all (voting “0” in question one or two) as well as, the
option ‘it depends on the circumstances’ in the original qualitative variable, as the authors of the module
have considered that these three groups of respondents are giving a similar answer (opinion). The value 10
means that changing planned policies in response to what most people is extremely important for
democracy. We are extremely thankful to Hans Peter Kriesi and Mónica Ferrín for sharing their coding.
10
Following a recent paper that uses the same data we select the same variables and
codings used in Ceka and Magalhaes (2014).
Socioeconomic information is captured through the following three dummies
variables: income, (value 1 includes those individuals in the highest quintile);
relative education level, (value 1 means having an education level above the mean
of their cohort in the respective countries) and, employment situation, (value 1
includes those in situation of unemployment).
Political attitudes include the left-right self-placement, in a 0-10 scale;
political trust11, as the mean score of the trust in national parliament, legal system,
politicians, political parties and police and last, interest in politics measured in a 14 scale, from very interested to not at all interested. As control variables, we
include gender; age, interpersonal trust12, and multiculturalism13. The two latter
are measured, each one, as a mean score of three items. Descriptive information
about these variables appears in appendix, table 2
4. Results.
How do these variables relate to each other and, how are they distributed
across Europe? Our first exploratory step has been to perform a factor analysis principal component and Varimax rotation- to see how the full set of variables
relate to each other. Table 3 shows the existence of three factors where the most
important good news from our point of view is that our three main dependent
variables (chosen because of their contents) concerning political decision-making
processes belong to the same second factor. They appear there with variables
related to social equality, showing that social justice and demands of more citizen
influence over policy are jointly considered. The first dimension may be mostly
interpreted as the sum of a liberal vision of the democracy (electoral competition
and free press).
11
Cronbach’s α > 0.83 in the four countries.
Cronbach’s α > 0.70 in the four countries.
13
Cronbach’s α > 0.78 in the four countries.
12
11
Table 3. Principal component analysis of the seventeen items.
Component
Opposition parties are free to criticize the government
The media are free to criticize the government
The media provide citizens with reliable information to judge the government
National elections are free and fair
Different political parties offer clear alternatives to one another
The courts treat everyone the same
The rights of minority groups are protected
The courts able to stop the government acting beyond its authority
Voters discuss politics with people they know before deciding how to vote
Immigrants only get the right to vote in national elections once they become citizens
1
,808
,768
,729
,727
,600
,584
,563
,532
,517
,414
2
,020
,039
,310
,212
,159
,524
,253
,460
,059
,236
3
,138
,077
-,045
,015
,336
-,156
,225
-,140
,509
,155
The government protects all citizens against poverty
The government takes measures to reduce differences in income levels
,239
,104
,777
,734
,160
,276
The government explains its decisions to voters
Citizens have the final say on political issues by voting directly in referendum
Governing parties are punished in elections when they have done a bad job
,449
,407
,424
,671
,547
,530
,093
,059
,078
Responsiveness to the citizens
Politicians take into account the views of other European governments
-,070
,031
,430
,178
,022
,789
38,6
8,6
6,2
Total Variance Explained in percentages.
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy ,927
Eigenvalues above 1
Source: ESS 2012. Own elaboration
These results give further credence to the idea of more fully placing the
zoom on our small set of variables. How are direct democracy, responsiveness and
accountability distributed across different contexts? The study of public opinion
support to institutions of direct democracy, especially the referendum, has been
widely developed. The debate has revolved largely around two main questions: in
which extent people support the use of the referendum and, which factors explain
this support. The expanded use of international opinion surveys, such as ESS and
ISSP, has made possible to carry out different cross-national analyses (Bowler et
al, 2007).
Figure 2 shows how important citizens think it is for democracy to have
accountability, referenda and responsiveness. It is crucial to remember that,
whereas the measurements of accountability and referendum are directly
comparable, this is not the case with responsiveness, which has been measured
through a different procedure that favors to have lower scorings.
Figure 2. Support to referendum, accountability and responsiveness by country (ESS countries, 0-10)
Source: ESS 2012. Own elaboration
Among the two variables which can be more clearly compared,
accountability is considered the most important characteristic across the countries
included in the ESS. This constant pattern is consistent with the arguments
developed in the theory section pointing to accountability as the first step towards
giving citizens a more central role in democratic processes. As a result, the
demand of accountability as a central democratic trait is quite overwhelming and
variability among countries is rather low.
Albania is the country where accountability and direct democracy receive
more support by the citizens. On the contrary, Slovakia is where accountability
presents the lowest value. In Slovakia, as well as in Ireland, Hungary, Russia and
Lithuania, direct democracy and accountability obtain a similar consideration.
Focusing on the countries with central interest to us it is important to
highlight that the Netherlands is where direct democracy receives the lowest mean
score (7,2). The United Kingdom (8,1) and Finland (7,9) present similar mean
scores and, Spain is one of the countries where direct democracy, and
13
responsiveness, is most demanded (8,8). Some of these results will be developed
in the next section when we focus exclusively in these four countries.
5. Focusing on four European countries.
Which of the two potential relationships described above is closest to the
actual distribution of public opinion in these countries? Is accountability the first
step, followed by responsiveness and then direct democracy? Or is it that
responsiveness and direct democracy are two alternative ways of going beyond
accountability that are preferred by different citizens? With this goal in mind, our
first step has been to create a similar three category variable for each of them: little
or no importance for democracy includes values from 0 to 5; medium importance
category, from 6 to 8 and, 14 very important, values 9 and 10.
Table 4. High, medium and low support to three democratic traits, by country
Spain
Finland
United
Kingdom
Netherlands
Little or no importance for democracy
Medium importance
Very important
Little or no importance for democracy
Medium importance
Very important
Little or no importance for democracy
Medium importance
Very important
Little or no importance for democracy
Medium importance
Very important
Direct
Democracy
6,6
24,2
69,2
10,7
46,5
42,9
13,1
36,4
50,5
19,4
53,2
27,4
Accountability
2,8
15,3
82,0
5,6
31,8
62,5
9,2
24,0
66,8
3,0
44,1
52,9
Responsiveness
11,8
25,1
63,1
29,1
30,6
40,3
19,0
32,3
48,8
28,2
31,1
40,7
Source: ESS 2012. Own elaboration.
The next step was to compare the core supporters of each variable between
them (figure 3) to see whether a cumulative structure exists. That is, whether for
example all citizens who consider responsiveness very important also consider that
accountability is a central democratic trait. These differences appear represented in
the figures 3A to 3C: a bit more than 30% of the British citizens (vertical axis)
think that accountability is a high democratic priority but direct democracy is not.
Value 5 in responsiveness was considered as medium importance due to it is the option “it depends on the circumstances” in the
filter variable.
14
14
On the other hand, less than 5% of British adults consider that direct democracy is
very important but accountability is not. In all countries this same pattern emerges
in a more or less pronounced way when comparing accountability to direct
democracy (3A) or to responsiveness (3C). This is not the case in the comparison
between core supporters of direct democracy with responsiveness. Finland, Spain
and the United Kingdom, in line with most of the ESS countries, show a similar
pattern: there are two different groups of core supporters, two groups relatively
similar in their size that choose that only one of these characteristics is a high
priority for them (3B). On the contrary, the Netherlands is the only country in
which the exclusive core supporters of responsiveness are clearly more numerous.
Figure 3. Differences between core supporters of accountability, responsiveness and direct democracy in four
West European countries.
3B. Core supporters:
Direct D. vs Respons.
Accountability
Direct Democracy
3A. Core supporters:
Account. vs Direct D.
Direct Democracy
Responsiveness
Accountability
3C. Core supporters:
Account. vs Respons.
Responsiveness
15
In conclusion, the hypothesis of these concepts representing three steps in the
same direction cannot be confirmed: direct democracy and responsiveness have
some similar but also some different core supporters. As a result, it makes sense to
approach their explanatory analysis as three different variables. In fact, using the
same explanatory variables for all of them will also show up to which point they
can be explained by similar or different social and attitudinal characteristics.
5.2. Factors affecting accountability, responsiveness and direct democracy:
political trust and ideology.
We use ordinary least squares -OLS regression- to explore some of the potential
explanatory variables of the support to these three variables. We mostly discuss the
effects of ideology and political trust, since we consider the remaining variables as
controls15.
Support to responsiveness has a more consistent relationship with our two main
variables in these four countries. Considering responsiveness central is consistently
related to left wing ideology in the four countries and to lack of political trust in all but
the UK (where the relationship has the same sign but does not reach significance).
Patterns are less clear for the other two dependent variables.
In line with previous research (Bengtsson et al. 2009; Font and Fernández 2014),
support to direct democracy is related to left wing ideology, at least in Finland and
Spain. By contrast, the relation between ideology and accountability appears only in
Finland and Netherlands.
Generally speaking, lack of political trust corresponds to a greater demand of
accountability, responsiveness and direct democracy, but this pattern is more clear also
for responsiveness than for the other two variables. The only clear exception is Finland
where more trusting people are those who consider accountability as being more
important.
15
Two main patterns emerge for these variables. First, a wider interest in politics corresponds with higher support to accountability in
the four countries. Second, multiculturalism has a significant and positive relation with accountability in the for the four countries.
16
Table 5 OLS Regression: Direct Democracy
Spain
Gender
Age
Income fifth quintile
Relative education
Unemployed
Multiculturalism
Interest Politics
Interpersonal Trust
R Square
Ideology
Political Trust Index
R Square
Beta
,000
,096
-,094
-,013
,028
,106
-,070
,069
,029
-,114
-,181
,080
16
Finland
-,084
-,043
,036
-,136
,019
-,027
,005
,059
,038
-,077
-,028
,045
***
**
***
*
*
***
***
***
***
*
**
United
Kingdom
Netherlands
-,002
-,013
-,044
-,064
,026
-,016
-,065
,057
,010
,044
-,051
,013
-,047
-,004
-,005
-,053
,013
,027
,011
,008
,021
-,024
-,199
,047
*
*
*
~
~
*
***
Table 6 OLS Regression: Responsiveness
Spain
Gender
Age
Income fifth quintile
Relative education
Unemployed
Multiculturalism
Interest Politics
Interpersonal Trust
R Square
Ideology
Political Trust Index
R Square
Beta
-,081
-,028
-,043
-,038
,001
,038
,057
,011
,019
-,229
-,160
,110
United
Kingdom
Finland
**
*
***
***
-,126
-,147
-,009
-,031
,009
-,023
,033
-,013
,052
-,087
-,095
,067
***
***
***
***
-,054
-,111
-,020
,009
,031
-,049
,061
,058
,025
-,083
-,056
,036
Netherlands
*
***
*
*
**
-,038
-,072
,006
-,008
,000
-,012
,050
,032
,026
-,069
-,193
,056
**
~
**
***
Table 7 OLS Regression: Accountability
Spain
Gender
Age
Income fifth quintile
Relative education
Unemployed
Multiculturalism
Interest Politics
Interpersonal Trust
R Square
Ideology
Political Trust Index
R Square
Beta
,003
,071
-,080
-,004
,046
,091
-,099
,094
,032
-,007
-,149
,052
Finland
**
**
~
**
***
**
***
-,108
-,026
-,069
,059
,011
,101
-,129
-,033
,073
-,078
,089
,082
***
**
*
***
***
***
**
United
Kingdom
Netherlands
-,015
,011
-,035
-,045
,015
,090
-,172
,041
,044
-,004
-,035
,045
-,016
,055
-,106
,049
,015
,095
-,178
,005
,066
-,059
-,083
,075
**
***
*
***
~
**
***
*
**
***p<0.001, **p<0.01, *p<0.05, ~p<0.10
Notes: Multicollinearity diagnostic statistics show that there is no cause for concern. VIF values for each of the variables
included in the different models are below 1,62 and tolerance values are above,62.
17
6. Discussion
From this set of preliminaty analyses we can draw a few conclusions. First,
regarding our first research question we have see that we cannot clearly speak of
accountability, reponsiveness and direct democracy as three cumulative steps in
the direction of demanding a more central role of citizens in democratic politics.
Most people consider that accountability is central to democracy and, as a result,
those considering central that responsiveness or direct democracy are essential
almost always belong also to the category of core supporters of accountability and
this patterns holds for the four countries examined more in depth.
This is not the case for the relationship between responsiveness and direct
democracy: those supporting them as essential democratic characteristics are
partially the same people, but there are also particular clubs of supporters of these
two different characteristics, with the Netherlands having a particularly large
group of exclusive supporters of responsiveness. In any case, the different format
of the responsiveness question introduces some noise and difficulties into this
comparison of support.
As we expected in our hypothesis 1,lack of political trust is more consistently
associated with responsiveness than with accountability, but this pattern is not so
clear for direct democracy. Only in two of our four countries, support to direct
democracy could be considered a result of lacking political trust.
The explanatory role of ideology is partially country specific (hypothesis 2).
This is mostly true for direct democracy and for accountability, but not for
responsiveness, where there is a consistent association between having a left wing
ideology and demanding governments who follow always citizen preferences.
To conclude, note that in forthcoming papers we will develop the third part
of our research strategy. It will consist on comparing the four “Stealth Democracy”
national surveys in order to combine the empirical evidence accumulated in
Europe over the last decade.
18
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20
Appendix
Table A1. Variables employed
Spain
Finland
United Kingdom
Netherlands
N
Min
Max
Mean
Stdev
N
Min
Max
Mean
Stdev
N
Min
Max
Mean
Stdev
N
Min
Max
Mean
Stdev
Direct
Democracy
1807
0
10
8,82
1,74
2146
0
10
7,89
1,916
2139
0
10
8,10
2,076
1804
0
10
7,19
2,149
Responsiveness
1803
0
10
8,04
2,78
2121
0
10
6,28
3,453
2148
0
10
7,12
3,218
1808
0
10
6,44
3,421
1844
Independent Variables
0
10
9,31
1,33
2147
0
10
8,59
1,537
2182
0
10
8,67
1,910
1834
0
10
8,55
1,341
Dependent Variables
Accountability
Gender
1889
0
1
,48
,50
2197
0
1
,47
,499
2286
0
1
,48
,500
1845
0
1
,49
,50
Age
Income. Fifth
quintile
Years of
education
Relative
education
Unemployed
1888
16
103
49,18
18,48
2197
15
95
49,92
19,67
2270
15
94
48,29
19,39
1845
15
95
48,12
18,51
1576
0
1
,34
,473
2057
0
1
,15
,357
1732
0
1
,22
,413
1505
0
1
,10
,301
1865
0
51
12,55
6,24
2185
0
39
13,22
4,43
2249
0
33
13,38
3,64
1843
1
35
13,79
4,08
1826
0
1
,43
,49
2143
0
1
,45
,497
2209
0
1
,42
,494
1839
0
1
,45
,498
1889
0
1
,15
,35
2197
0
1
,06
,234
2286
0
1
,06
,244
1845
0
1
,04
,203
Multiculturalism
Interest in
politics
Interpersonal
Trust
Left-right selfplacement
Political Trust
1788
0
10
5,59
2,18
2149
0
10
6,10
1,69
2159
0
10
4,82
2,24
1767
0
10
5,67
1,57
1886
1
4
2,80
,99
2196
1
4
2,42
,781
2281
1
4
2,62
,96
1844
1
4
2,32
,83
1875
0
10
5,10
1,71
2186
,67
10
6,41
1,46
2256
0
10
5,65
1,58
1839
0
9,67
6,01
1,45
1733
0
10
4,56
2,41
2099
0
10
5,67
2,08
1900
0
10
5,06
1,83
1779
0
10
5,41
2,10
1790
0
10
3,35
1,85
2158
,20
10
6,19
1,58
2126
0
10
4,76
1,82
1792
0
9,60
5,64
1,57