Article Satisfaction with democracy and voter turnout: A temporal perspective

Numerous studies conclude that countries in which citizens express higher levels of satisfaction with democracy also tend to display higher levels of voter turnout in national elections. Yet it is difficult to draw causal inferences from this positive cross-sectional relationship, because democracies feature many historical, cultural, and institutional differences that are not easily controlled for in cross-sectional comparisons. We apply an alternative, temporal approach to this issue by ask-ing the question: Are over-time declines (increases) in aggregate levels of satisfaction within democracies associated with increases (declines) in levels of voter turnout within these democracies? Our temporal analysis of this relationship in 12 democracies over the period 1976–2011 reveals a pattern that is the opposite of that suggested by previous cross-sectional studies: namely, we find that over-time increases in citizens ’ satisfaction with democracy are associated with sig-nificant decreases in voter turnout in national elections in these countries. Keywords cross-national, longitudinal, satisfaction with democracy, voter turnout We analyze voter turnout and its relationship to citizen satisfaction with democracy. Cross-national empirical studies on voter turnout suggest that levels of citizen satis-faction are linked to voter turnout (e.g. Anderson an