In recent years, the extraordinary outbreak of the European society (especially, in the South of Europe) to protest, among other things, against the poor functioning of its democracy has taken by surprise not only to political parties and media, but also to politological discipline in Europe.
One reason has been the lack of attention that has been paid in research to analyze the meaning that people give to democracy, as well as to the detailed assessments they make about its performance.
Added to this is the too narrow conceptualization that macro studies on quality of democracy (QoD) make about the concept of democracy, and the poor relationship established between citizens’ opinions / beliefs and theoretical and empirical conceptualizations of democracy.
The aim of this paper is to show that when we analyze the meaning that citizens give to democracy, this has primarily to do with the substantive outcomes that democracy is capable of achieving, a dimension that has been largely ignored by QoD studies. Thus, I will show that beyond the general level of dissatisfaction with its performance, democracy loses public legitimacy when the outcomes dimension deteriorates, that is, when democracy fails to lessen income inequalities, provide welfare policies and supply other immaterial benefits (Andrain and Smith, 2006). This loss of public legitimacy faced by democracies due to their poor performance is at the ground of the current cycle of citizens protests in Southern Europe.
To test this hypothesis, the paper will analyze data from the Sixth Round of the ESS, which contains a module of questions on citizens' opinions on democracy, and I will compare them with macro data collected by myself that measure separately the performance and outcomes dimensions of democracy.
