Citizens’ Evaluations of DemocracyA Microscope with Quality Seal

Resumo

The focus of this chapter is to provide an answer to the second central question of the book: how do Europeans evaluate their democratic systems? We undertake three types of descriptive analyses: (1) analyzing which democratic elements are rated best/worst by European citizens in their respective countries; (2) evaluating the extent to which they are able to provide meaningful evaluations about the performance of democracy; and (3) assessing to what extent citizens’ evaluations of democracy cohere with those given by experts. The results show that Europeans tend to express the highest levels of dissatisfaction with the performance of elements they regard as the most essential for democracy, which provides a meaningful interpretation of the supposed crisis of democratic legitimacy currently affecting European countries. Furthermore, as shown by the strong correlation between their evaluations and those of “objective” data, public assessments of democratic performance should be seriously taken into consideration.