How do citizens generally perceive their local government? Does it live up to their expectations? Do citizens see it as a competent, legitimate political institution that produces satisfactory political outcomes? Do they trust their elected representatives and their ability to respond to the demands of their voters? These are key questions in the understanding of local democratic governance. The main contribution of this paper is empirical; the paper aims at describing the general perceptions and expectations of Swedish citizens on local government. In addition the paper seeks to explore the variation between individuals and contexts. Do satisfied citizens share the same characteristics? Is there such a thing as a demanding citizen and in that case; who is he or she? Are there contextual differences? Are for example citizens more satisfied with the possibilities to influence local political decision-making in smaller municipalities? The empirical questions touch upon several theoretical concepts, such as political satisfaction, political participation and influence, trust and political legitimacy. This paper elaborates on the latter. Unlike states, local governments do not gain legitimacy through independent evaluations or external criteria. Thus local legitimacy in this paper is perceived as a relation between the local government and the citizens, which can be studied from a citizen perspective. The empirical outcomes in the paper are; citizens attitudes to the possibilities to participate and influence local political decision-making (input-legitimacy), citizens perceptions of the democratic quality of local political processes (throughput-legitimacy) and citizens satisfaction with local policy outcomes (output-legitimacy). The analysis is based on survey data from Sweden; The Statistics Sweden citizen survey. The survey is conducted annually since 2005, and covers more than 100 000 citizens in 156 different Swedish municipalities. The data is analyzed using multilevel modeling in MlwiN.
