Majoritarianism and Support for Democracy: the Role of Electoral Systems : A quantative study on what lowers individual’s support for democracy in countries with majoritarian and proportionate electoral systems.

Sammanfattning

This study approaches the literature on support for democracy by hypothesizing a negative relationship with majoritarian views of decision-making. Further, this study investigates what might enhance this relationship, analyzing the conditional effect of electoral systems. Using individual level data from European Social Survey, this essay studies observations from 26 European countries by linear, logistic and conditional regression analyses of two different types of support for democracy. This study finds that while the relationship between majoritarianism and support for democracy exists as suspected, the results for electoral systems are less clear. While this result indicates a conditioning effect, it is the opposite of what was expected, as proportionate electoral systems might enhance the negative relationship between majoritarianism and support for democracy. This study contributes to the research of democratic backsliding, which has concluded that support for democracy is important, but what creates support, or lack thereof, is far less agreed upon.