Satisfaction with democracy and perceived performance of the welfare state in Europe

This paper tests several hypotheses to explain the link between satisfaction with democracy and welfare state performance. In conducting multilevel analysis we use data on the contextual and institutional conditions including the welfare state regimes as well as data from European Social Survey 2012 special module on democracy. Our results show that a discrepancy between the desired policy goal and perceived policy outcome of the welfare state (policy deficit) influences the perceptions of citizens of how democracy works. In particular, social policies aimed at reducing poverty correlates positively with one’s satisfaction with democracy