Perceived Democratic Performance, Ideological Centrism, and the Trustee Style: Party Voters and Political Parties

In this paper, we analyze the link between party voters’ perception of democratic performance and characteristics of their party. We focus on the extent to which the trustee style is emphasized within parties and party voters’ ideological centrism and examine how the trustee style interacts with ideological centrism in explaining party voters’ perceptions of democratic performance. Our main findings are that centrist voters of parties that contain high proportions of trustees express more positive perceptions of performance compared to ideologically extreme voters of the same kinds of parties. Furthermore, the greater the emphasis on the trustee style within parties, the less successful they are in mobilizing perceptions of performance among ideologically extreme voters, compared to parties that emphasize it to a lesser extent.