Democratic Aspirations, Democracy Evaluations and Political Participation: A Multidimensional Analysis

Attempts to analyze the relationship between citizens’ democratic aspirations and patterns of political participation have been limited. Most prior studies either relied on a single indicator to operationalize democratic aspirations (assuming a common conception of democracy), or focused on a single country. Relying on a multidimensional notion of democratic aspirations, based on the multiple indicators included in the ESS-6, and incorporating the potential moderating role played by contextual factors, this paper analyzes how Europeans’ patterns of political participation are affected, on the one hand, by their democratic aspirations, and, on the other hand, by the mismatches between these aspirations and the evaluations of existing procedures. Following Kriesi, Saris and Moncagatta (Forthcoming), democratic aspirations as well as the mismatches between aspirations and evaluations are grouped in three dimensions: liberal, social-justice and direct-democratic. In a first step, the relationship between aspirations and the likelihood of voting and protesting is analyzed, while in a second step the mismatches between aspirations and evaluations are introduced. The direction and strength of these relationships are expected to vary for each of the dimensions, and also to be different for each of the modes of participation under consideration due to their different nature (institutionalized and non-institutionalized). At the context level, the electoral supply is expected to moderate whether certain democratic aspirations or mismatches are translated into a greater or lower likelihood of turning out to vote. For example, higher aspirations and mismatches should only increase the likelihood of voting in the presence of parties that regard a given dimension (e.g. social-justice) as important. In the case of protest, the openness of the political system is expected to play an important role. In general, the association between aspirations, mismatches, and protest is expected to be stronger in countries with medium levels of institutional openness.