Winners, Losers, and Attitudes about Government in Contemporary Democracies

Anderson, Christopher; Tverdova, Yuliya V.

doi:10.1177/0192512101022004003

Cited by 235 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The political trust literature and empirical research indicate that citizens who support the parties forming the majority in the government (the 'winners') express more political trust than those identifying with the parties comprising the minority in the parliament (the 'losers') (Anderson & Tverdova 2001;Dalton 2004;Holmberg 1999). Thus, when the political parties forming the government enjoy a large and solid support base, it is believed to have an enhancing effect on political trust.…”

Section: Predispositions and Political Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political trust in Iceland: Performance or politics?

Vilhelmsdóttir¹,

Kristinsson²

2018

irpa

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Economic performance has a well-known relationship to political trust. If the economy is perceived as performing well, the levels of political trust are likely to improve. During the 2008 economic crash in Iceland, this relationship seemed vindicated once more. Political trust in Iceland fell from very high to medium levels. Paradoxically, strong indicators of good economic performance after the crash have not been reflected in similarly strong indicators of greater political trust. Thus, while the economy has recovered, political trust has not followed suit to a comparable degree. To account for this discrepancy, we analyse the data on political trust in Iceland before and after the crash. Our findings indicate that while the economy is important in generating political trust, improved economic performance does not account for the whole scenario. The political impact of the crisis remains an obstacle to re-establishing political trust to previous levels, as identifying with a party in the government fails to contribute to political trust in the previous manner. Similarly, personal experience of the crisis may have created a sense of alienation among age cohorts that were particularly affected by the crash and the subsequent economic recession.

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Section: Predispositions and Political Trustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political trust in Iceland: Performance or politics?

Vilhelmsdóttir¹,

Kristinsson²

2018

irpa

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“…10 The perceptions of political winners are certainly important, yet one cannot risk ignoring the perceptions of those who lose in elections, as "losers' consent" in accepting the outcome and the policies that follow is critical to democratic viability. 11 Support of democratic principles is crucial in systems where the losers have been consistently out of power. For example, high support of democratic principles for parties beyond the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and their traditional coalitional partner (Komeito) arguably explains the country's long-term democratic stability.…”

Section: Losers' Consentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Losers Consent in Mixed Systems: Public Perceptions of Taiwan’s 2008 Legislative Yuan Election

Rich¹

2016

J. Contemp. East. Asia

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Elections are the foundation of representative democracy. Partisan differences in opinion naturally arise, yet until recently, few researchers analyzed the perceptions of democratic quality between those who win versus those who lose out in electoral competition. Losers' consent remains crucial for democratic stability and the variance in perceptions between winners and losers provides a means to assess the stability in democracies young and old. Despite the insight from this growing literature, researchers continue to focus primarily on Western democracies. Furthermore, what constitutes a winner requires greater clarity, particularly in mixed legislative system elections where voters choose both a district candidate and a party list. This paper intends to extend our understanding of losers' consent through a multilevel conception of electoral success, a conception more in tune with the dynamics of mixed systems.By definition mixed legislative systems employ at least two mechanisms to allocate seats in one chamber of a legislature. Most of these combinations are single member districts (SMDs) like those in the United States and United Kingdom, combined with seats by proportional representation (PR) allocated at the national or provincial level.1 Mixed systems were a rarity prior to 1990 with Germany as the only democracy to consistently employ a mixed legislative system. Since 1990 however, mixed systems have arisen in East and Southeast Asia, the former communist world, Latin America, Africa, and New Zealand. Just as pure PR systems were the electoral system of choice in the twentieth century, mixed systems have the potential to proliferate in a similar

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“…Here, based on regime institutions at a lower level the performance of the current democratic regime is central comprising the constitutional framework, governments and parliaments, the judiciary, and the media. 5 And it is just here that a strategy like 'minimizing the losers' finds its appropriate place: generally those voters whose party or candidate lost the election express lower confidence in the government (Anderson and Tverdova 2001) which at a higher level leads to decreased satisfaction with democracy (Anderson and LoTempio 2002) and may even destabilize it. 6 Therefore, losers are 'the crucial veto players of democratic governance' (Anderson et al 2005, 7) or said in another way: ''the viability of electoral democracy depends on its ability to secure the support of a substantial proportion of individuals who are displeased with the outcome of an election (Nadeau and Blais 1993, 553)''.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimizing the losers: regime satisfaction in multi-level systems

2011

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The political blessings of federalism are the core of our discussion. These benefits can be operationalized as a decrease in the number of outvoted people in a federal system with majority voting which is an important source of regime satisfaction. The approach originates from the work of Roland Pennock who developed a similar methodology about 50 years ago. Measuring inverse regime satisfaction by the maximum of the outvoted, our results show that regime satisfaction decreases if total population rises. Additionally, the share of the maximum outvoted decreases if the top level cooperates with lower-level jurisdictions and if all jurisdictions of one level are included. However, while the inclusion of an additional lowest-level jurisdiction always reduces the relative number of the outvoted, the effect of including other levels depends on the structure of jurisdictions already intertwined.

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Winners, Losers, and Attitudes about Government in Contemporary Democracies

Cited by 235 publications

References 26 publications

Political trust in Iceland: Performance or politics?

Political trust in Iceland: Performance or politics?

Assessing Losers Consent in Mixed Systems: Public Perceptions of Taiwan’s 2008 Legislative Yuan Election

Minimizing the losers: regime satisfaction in multi-level systems

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