Legitimacy, disaffection, and dissatisfaction: trends and structure in attitudes towards portuguese democratic politics

One of the prevalent narratives about the political attitudes of citizens in advanced democracies has revolved around the notion of «democratic dissatisfaction». According to this narrative, citizens’ support for democracy as a regime has remained at high levels in the last decades, suggesting the absence of a «legitimacy crisis», quite unlike some had feared in a not so distant past (Crozier et al. 1975). Instead, a crisis of a different sort seems to be in the making. It is one that is characterized by increasing popular dissatisfaction with the way democracy works among Western publics