The “ballot structure” has been a rather neglected dimension o f electoral systems, due to the difficulty in measuring it. This paper analyses personal representation and freedom to choose members of Parliament (lower houses) in the 27 countries of the European Union. In a first group of countries, citizens have a single and closed ballot so that it is impossible to disentangle a personal vote from a vote for a party. In a second group of countries, citizens have the possibility to express, in a limited way, both party and personal preferences. In a third group, citizens have total freedom to choose candidates within and across political parties. We show that, on average, countries with better educational systems have electoral systems with a higher degree of personal representation and freedom of choice. We also confirm earlier results, using individual countries’ data, that there is no trade off between citizens’ freedom of choice and political stability. Finally, using Eurobarometer data from 2006 till 2010, we show that life satisfaction (LS) is always higher than satisfaction with democracy (SD) and particularly that satisfaction with democracy is lower in the first group of countries.
