Why are citizens dissatisfied with democracy? The “critical citizens” literature supposes that dissatisfaction is caused by a combination of high expectations and critical outlooks on politics amongst citizens with above-average education and political interest, leading to high levels of electoral and non-electoral participation. The pessimistic approach, in contrast, assumes that dissatisfied democrats are not confident about or interested in politics, but simply more alienated, and can rather be labeled “disaffected democrats”, given their low social status and missing involvement in the political system. Notably, the difference between the two interpretations is based on the underlying assumption on how dissatisfaction evolves. This paper analyzes the causes of dissatisfaction more carefully in order to be able to judge its normative dimensions. I argue that only if dissatisfaction is caused by structural conditions and hence an expression of disaffected citizens’ feeling left behind by society, it is a threat to democratic legitimacy, as it means that the causes of dissatisfaction are beyond the reach of actual democratic improvement. To test this claim empirically, I use structural equation modeling (SEM) with data for 29 countries from the European Social Survey 6 to analyze whether citizens’ attitudes towards democracy are directly or indirectly affected by their socio-structural attributes – their position in society, education, income etc. I assume that the socio-structural position influences satisfaction with democracy directly (the higher the position, the better the satisfaction) as well as indirectly (the higher the status, the higher both expectations and evaluations).
