Distinctiveness in the Parliamentary Arena: Consequences for Satisfaction with Democracy. Longitudinal analysis of Denmark, Netherlands and the UK
Abstract
Choice and credible opposition are essential attributes of established representative democracies. There is academic debate on the extent to which the relationship between opposition and governing parties has become ‘blurred’ in policymaking and procedural running of parliament, but it is unclear how voters respond to it. In this paper, I study to what extent parliamentary distinctiveness (PD) of government and opposition parties is related to satisfaction with democracy. I hypothesize that the relationship between the levels of government-opposition parliamentary distinctiveness and democratic legitimacy in general elections is curvilinear: relative to moderate levels of distinctiveness, low and high levels are negatively related to the measures of democratic legitimacy. I also suggest that voters’ reaction to the lack of distinctiveness in the parliamentary arena is moderated by their group partisan identity – whether they support the incumbent or the opposition. I use multilevel analysis of survey data and legislative data spanning from the 1970s to 2020s from The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Denmark, to study the effect of PD on individuals’ democratic satisfaction. I find evidence for the suggested curvilinear relationship only for the opposition supporters’ satisfaction in the Netherlands. For the Danish opposition voters, this patern is reversed. For the British voters, PD does not appear to be of importance.
