How Elections Increase Satisfaction with Democracy among Political Activists

• In Event: Party Activists, Party Members, and Intra-Party Democracy

Abstract

A society’s satisfaction with democracy (SWD) is one of the key elements for democratic survival, though this variable has seen a steady decline in recent years, especially in new democracies. Drawing on previous research, we posit that the dwindling satisfaction with democracy among political activists, who may become future political leaders, is one of the key factors contributing to this general decline. Political participation in the democratic process, particularly through voting, is considered one of the most effective remedies for declining satisfaction with democracy: citizens are known to be more satisfied with democracy after they have expressed their vote. Unlike citizens, though, party activists can participate in the democratic process in different other ways, some of which can be encouraged through policy. We estimate the effect of election monitoring as a form of political participation on satisfaction with democracy in a new EU-member state. We leverage a pre-registered longitudinal data study that compares party activists who monitored elections with party activists with non-election monitoring responsibilities on election day in a difference-in-difference framework. We employ an 8,300-response three-wave panel of members of a new party, collected immediately before and after the 2020 Romanian general elections. Among party activists, satisfaction with democracy robustly increases by seven percentage points post-election and the effect persists two months after. The SWD increase is not stronger among the activists acting as party delegates in the precincts on election day. We observe similar dynamics with a three-wave panel of non-partisan election observers collected around the same election.

Authors

• Costin Marius Viorel Ciobanu, Aarhus University

• Daniel Sandu, University of Fribourg