The rise of radical and populist parties, evident in recent years in electoral outcomes in countries such as Spain, Greece, and Germany, is a hotly debated and intensely studied subject in contemporary political science. Some have linked this trend to an insufficient degree of animosity and lack of limited competition between government and opposition, presumably leading to dissatisfaction among citizens with the choices presented to them by the parties, and as a corollary, with the democratic institutions in general. Radical and populist parties thrive on this dissatisfaction at the expense of the culprit mainstream parties.
Interestingly, though, while extensive research has been dedicated to citizens’ satisfaction with democracy and its determinants, little has been done to study the role of actual actions of politicians.
This paper explores the effect of government-opposition conflict in parliament on voters' satisfaction with democracy. I Draw on government-opposition voting data from 10 democracies over 34 parliamentary terms, linked with survey data of over 25,000 respondents from the CSES project. I find a strong and significant positive effect, whereby higher levels of government-opposition conflict are correlated with higher levels of satisfaction, even when controlling for various individual-, parliament- and system-level factors. Moreover, this relationship also applies in both consensus and majoritarian systems.
The contribution of this paper is manifold, both to the study of legislative behaviour and of satisfaction with democracy, highlighting the importance not only of the governing parties' performance but of all represented parties, including the opposition.