Social Protection and Satisfaction with Democracy: A Multi-level Analysis
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.12080 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
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P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 4 VO L 6 2 , 7 8 4 – 8 0 3
doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12080
Social Protection and Satisfaction with
Democracy: a Multi-level Analysis
Kadri Lühiste
University of Tartu
The aim of this article is to examine the link between the quality of social protection and citizens’ satisfaction with
the functioning of democracy – an association that has received very limited attention in the rich body of empirical
research on popular satisfaction with democracy.To test the hypothesis that social protection levels influence citizens’
satisfaction with democracy, the article conducts a multi-level regression analysis using European Social Survey
(2008/9) data from 24 countries.The results of the analysis demonstrate that between-country differences are linked
to variation in social protection levels, and within-country differences depend on individual satisfaction with social
provision, while controlling for other relevant factors.The findings indicate that people do expect democratic regimes
to provide social protection along with economic performance and thus suggest that democratic governments face a
challenge in meeting simultaneous demands for social protection and economic prosperity. Altogether, the study
contributes to debates about the implications of welfare policies and citizen satisfaction with regime performance.
Keywords: political support; social protection; democracy
This article examines the link between the scope and quality of social protection and
citizens’ satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in European democracies. While
popular satisfaction with democracy is a concept that has attracted significant scholarly
attention and has given rise to a rich empirical literature,1 few existing studies have
scrutinised the question of whether and how democratic satisfaction is related to the quality
of social protection.
Yet there are good reasons to expect a positive relationship between the level of social
protection and citizens’ assessment of how well democracy is functioning. To foster
equality, every democratic government has granted social rights through some form of
social protection. In Europe in particular, social provision has become a major area of
government action, embedded in citizens’ expectations towards the state.Thus, comparative
survey research has shown that citizens in European countries are significantly more
supportive of redistributive policies and public welfare provision than their peers in other
democratic societies.2
With few notable exceptions3 social protection and its impact on popular satisfaction
with regime performance has received very limited scholarly attention.This study aims to
fill the gap by exploring potential links between social protection and satisfaction with the
way democracy functions. Specifically, the article examines how individual-level variations
in satisfaction with social protection and country-level differences in public welfare pro-
vision explain citizens’ satisfaction with democracy.
This study derives a number of hypotheses about the association between social protec-
tion and citizens’ satisfaction with democracy from the existing literature.At the individual
level, the study expects that the more positively an individual evaluates social protection the
© 2013 The Author. Political Studies © 2013 Political Studies Association
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more satisfied he or she is with the way democracy works. Using existing literature as a
guide, the study further examines whether and how the strength of this association varies
across sub-sets of the population and across countries. Based on previous studies,4 evalua-
tions of social protection and satisfaction with democracy are expected to be more strongly
associated among less advantaged citizens and people on the political left, as compared to
well-off individuals and people on the political right.
At the country level, the study expects that the more effective and extensive the social
protection in the country, the higher its citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. While
exploring the relationship between social protection and satisfaction with democracy, the
study also controls for common determinants of satisfaction with democracy, such as
economic performance, corruption, vote choice and individual-level socio-economic
factors.
To test the hypotheses, the study carries out a multi-level analysis encompassing 24
European democracies, which makes the scope of this research one of the widest among the
existing studies of satisfaction with democracy.
This article is structured in five sections. The first section discusses conceptual links
between democracy, equality and social rights and highlights the relevance of social
protection for democracy. The second explains the notion of satisfaction with the func-
tioning of democracy and proposes a number of hypotheses about the sources of this
satisfaction based on existing literature. Next, the data, variables and method that are
employed to test the hypotheses are described.The results section gives a brief overview of
the tested models and highlights the main results, the implications of which are discussed
in the final section.
Democracy and Social Protection
The notion of ‘social rights’ as an essential component of an inclusive democracy is far
from recent. According to the theory of social citizenship emanating from the seminal
work of T. H. Marshall (1950), being a citizen of a democratic country entails not only
political rights and civil liberties, but also social rights such as the right to health care and
income support in case of need. Other scholars emphasise the role of social protection
in alleviating the persistent conflict between democracy and capitalism. Markets that are
‘indifferent to the fate of individuals’ (Lane, 1978, p. 16) inevitably create inequalities in
resources and living conditions among citizens, and thereby undermine political equality
(Dahl, 1986; 1998; King and Waldron, 1988; Rueschemeyer, 2005). The solution to this
contradiction has been mixtures of markets and deliberately imposed government inter-
ventions that aim to achieve greater equality and fairness (Dahl, 1986; 1998). While some
authoritarian regimes have managed to persist without guaranteeing their population
social protection, no modern democracy even attempts to do so (Dahl, 1998; Spicker,
2008).
Another strand of thinking has linked inequality and poverty to threats to the legitimacy
and stability of governments (Gurr, 1971; Wilensky, 1975). As suggested by Harold
Wilensky (1975, pp. 109–10), welfare benefits and social provision can contribute to
democratic stability by transforming radicals into reformers and channelling potential
unrest into tame demands for better wages and higher benefits. This theoretical claim is
© 2013 The Author. Political Studies © 2013 Political Studies Association
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supported by empirical evidence from a number of cross-national studies which show that
economic inequality reduces the longevity of democratic regimes and increases the odds of
revolution (e.g. Acemoglu and Robinson, 2005; Boix, 2003; Landa and Kapstein, 2001).
Thus, the establishment of welfare systems has been seen as essential for democracy for
various reasons, including the need to alleviate the conflict between democracy and
capitalism, to enhance the democratic ideal of political equality and to promote stable
regimes. Although social protection is not sufficient for democratic government, the two
appear to be intimately linked (Spicker, 2008, p. 251).
Satisfaction with Democracy and its Determinants
Citizen satisfaction with the performance of democracy has become an increasingly
well-theorised construct. It constitutes one of the multiple dimensions of political support,
as explained by David Easton (1965), Pippa Norris (1999) and others. Defined as an
indicator of government responsiveness, satisfaction with democratic performance should
not be confused with support for democracy as a regime principle. A citizen who is
dissatisfied with democracy in practice does not necessarily question democracy as ‘the only
game in town’ (Klingemann, 1999).
The relevance of citizen satisfaction with democratic performance is reflected in the rich
body of empirical analysis. In particular, previous studies have examined how assessments of
the functioning of democracy are influenced by economic performance, anti-corruption
performance and vote choice. The rationale behind each of these associations will be
explained below and the respective variables will be incorporated in the models tested by
this study. First, however, the link between social protection and popular satisfaction with
the performance of democracy must be highlighted.
Satisfaction with Social Protection
Following the theoretical assumption that social rights constitute an indispensable part of a
modern democracy, the study hypothesises that citizens of a democracy expect their
governments to provide social protection, and base their evaluations of the functioning of
democracy on its scope and quality. This expectation appears to be particularly well
founded in the case of European democracies where social protection is stipulated in the
form of legal rights at both the national and supranational level (e.g. in the European Social
Charter and the European Code of Social Security) and...
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