Based on theories about party and electoral systems provided by Downs (1957), Anderson and Guillory (1997), and Duverger (1984), we examine the relationship between citizen satisfaction with democracy and the institutional context in which democratic participation takes place. Using a multi-level design that controls for both institutional-level and individual-level differences, we find that as the number of political parties increases. citizen satisfaction with democracy first decreases and then increases. This result holdr regardless of whether or not one supported the ruling government in the previous election, undermining previous research that contendr that "winner" or "loser" status l e d to diverging evaluations of democratic structures, even when controlling for economic evaluations. Aallitionally, wefind that satisfaction with democracy is signijcantly lower in large district proportional representation (PR) systems relative to singlemember district systems and when the dijference between votes and legislative seat-shares is high. This finding suggests that we ought to reconsider the theoretical interaction between representativeness and efective governance as well as the democratic process versus the outcomes of elections.

I argue that institutional context conditions the effect of socioeconomic resources on individuals' levels of political sophistication. Specifically, because the decision to become sophisticated is quite expensive for citizens at the lower end of the SES scale, the relatively high levels of free information produced in certain party and electoral system contexts leads disproportionately large numbers of these citizens-as compared to those with more resources-to decide to become politically sophisticated. I formulate and test (using OLS regression) a conditional model of political sophistication that includes institutional context variables, a “resources” factor score, and interaction terms representing the product of “resources” and each of these context variables. The model is supported empirically. The interaction term coefficients have signs that are the reverse of those for the context variables, indicating that the effect of resources on sophistication is greater or smaller depending on the value of the institutional variables. This conditional effect is graphically depicted.

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Objective The civic‐society literature argues that members of voluntary civic associations engage in community building and other activities that hone political skills and cultivate a sense of efficacy, which can lead to higher levels of participation in politics. This study situates cohousing in the civic‐society literature and asks whether cohousing as a form of civic association encourages participation in electoral politics. Methods Data from the U.S. National Cohousing Survey, Phase III were used in bivariate correlation, Jonckheere‐Terpstra, and chi‐square procedures to test the hypothesis that cohousing involvement facilitates political participation. Results There were ordered increases in levels of the dependent variable, political activities index, for increasing levels of cohousing‐involvement variables. Chi‐square tests were significant for relationships between cohousing‐involvement variables and three dummy variables comprised of the activities included in political activities index—writing to Congress increased (since moving to cohousing), campaign contributions increased, and campaigning door‐to‐door increased. Conclusions The chi‐square results bolstered the evidence, on an aggregate level, in support of the hypothesis. Cohousing holds out promise as a means of revitalizing democratic citizenship.