The Political Attitudes of Divided European Citizens by Christian Lahusen

Author:Christian Lahusen [Lahusen, Christian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, International Relations, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000288414
Google: UVYFEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-11-02T05:04:58+00:00

There are clearer differences in the assessment of the economic situation. For example, respondents complaining about the deterioration in the economic situation of their household and diagnosing a serious crisis are dissatisfied. In figures, this means that the predicted average likelihood of dissatisfaction with government work is 40.7% for households experiencing a financial decline, i.e., about 13.4% higher than for those who see their budgetary situation improving (27.3%). However, the high levels of dissatisfaction among those surveyed who did not provide any information show that the dissatisfaction is a relative one. In particular, the better off, those who have improved their financial situation and are unable to discern a crisis, are comparatively more satisfied with the work of the government.

With regard to political factors, political confidence and political interest make a difference in the level of dissatisfaction with government policies. When it comes to institutional confidence, in particular, it is noticeable that people with a high level of confidence are much more satisfied with the government. Conversely, satisfaction with the work of the government decreases dramatically when people have less confidence in political institutions or do not provide any information. Among the personal attributes, it is noticeable that respondents with a generally higher level of life satisfaction are less often dissatisfied with government work. Women and all those over 25 tend to be slightly less satisfied than men and younger people. Respondents with a migration background are less critical. And with regard to the countries, it can be seen that in all countries there is a noticeably higher tendency to be dissatisfied with government work when the answers are compared with those of the Swiss respondents.

All in all, the social position of people in society plays a less visible role in determining whether citizens are satisfied with their government. Rather, it is the perceived deterioration of the personal economic situation and the increasing crisis sensitivity as well as the fundamental trust of the respondents in the political institutions that are closely related to satisfaction.

On the basis of these findings, the analysis can move to the question of whether the satisfaction with the work of the government may also be related to the assessment of living conditions in other countries. For this purpose, the regression analysis was recalculated, but now additionally with the respective reference countries. As in the previous sections, the analysis had to be calculated separately for each reference country, with the result that respondents from the respective reference country were not included in the calculations either. As the results table with all variables is too extensive to be presented here, merely a compilation of the correlation measures for the nine reference countries is presented here.

Figure 5.4 shows that satisfaction with government work is clearly related to the assessment of living conditions elsewhere; those who feel worse off are also less satisfied. Our findings, therefore, suggest that people measure their own government by whether living in other countries is better or worse. Here, too, the ranking between the best-placed and worst-placed countries can be seen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.