Distinctiveness in the Parliamentary Arena through Sentiment in Parliamentary Speeches: Consequences for Satisfaction with Democracy

Choice and credible opposition are essential attributes of established representative democracies. There is academic debate on the extent to which the relationship between opposition and governing parties has become ‘blurred’ in policymaking and the procedural running of parliament, but it is unclear how voters respond to it. I study to what extent parliamentary distinctiveness (PD) of government and opposition parties is related to satisfaction with democracy (SWD). In this paper, PD is operationalized with the sentiment score calculated from government and opposition parties’ speeches directed at their respective opponents. I hypothesize that this relationship is positive: citizens’ SWD is higher with higher levels of parliamentary distinctiveness between government and opposition parties. I use multilevel analysis of survey data and speech data spanning from the 1970s to 2018 from Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. I compare these findings with the analysis of PD’s effect on SWD, where parliamentary distinctiveness is operationalized through government-opposition vote choice on legislation. This way, I examine the idea that opposition might vocalize its disagreement with government during debates more strongly than in the process of final voting. I assess the extent to which these two aspects of parties’ parliamentary activities affect citizens’ SWD differently.