Power and ideology – A comparison of citizens’ and politicians’ satisfaction with democracy

Abstract The scholarship on satisfaction with democracy has increased significantly in recent decades, with scholars investigating how democratic satisfaction influences political attitudes and behaviors as well as the individual and contextual determinants of citizens ’ satisfaction with democracy. To our knowledge, however, scholars omitted to examine the democratic satisfaction of politicians . Making use of survey data from the Comparative Candidates Survey, this research note addresses this gap in the literature. As a first step in this endeavor, we pose two objectives. First, we want to compare levels of democratic satisfaction across citizens and politicians in different countries to evaluate whether mass-elite gaps are apparent. Second, we want to replicate core findings from the research on citizens but with politicians. As such, we examine two hallmark findings in the literature on democratic satisfaction with respect to the role of ideological extremism/nicheness and the winner-loser gap at elections. Our study contributes to the growing literature on elites’ attitudes and behaviors and identifies some of the conditions that favor and undermine politicians’ satisfaction with democracy. This is a crucial research endeavor given elites’ influence on public opinion and democratic stability.