Winners, Losers, and Citizens Support in Contemporary Democracies

20世纪下半叶，世界各地的民主国家数量增加，公民影响决策的机会增加。由于公民和政府之间的关系是民主政治研究中的基本问题之一，公众对民主进程和对民主制度的支持的满意度是一个研究领域，对于我们理解当代民主如何运作以及如何运作来说，这一领域比以往任何时候都更加重要。在1995年启动的研究的基础上，拟议的项目的目的是收集、分析和报告关于公民作为政治多数派(赢家)或政治少数派(输家)的地位如何影响对50多个当代民主国家的政治制度和对政治机构的支持的满意度的数据。需要解决的具体问题包括：(1)现有民主国家和新兴民主国家的赢家和输家之间支持率的差异模式；(2)赢家和输家满意度随时间变化的动态；(3)政治机构如何协调赢家/输家地位和政治支持之间的关系。拟议的研究结合了系统地研究机构/背景和个人层面对政治支持的影响。具体地说，它结合了对民主制度和程序、个人投票行为以及对政治制度的态度的审查。因此，这项研究填补了早期研究的一个关键空白，这些研究分别关注个人层面、系统或程序对政治支持的影响。该项目以选举作为民主国家公民影响力的核心机制为重点，旨在调查选举如何在公众心目中产生赢家和输家，输赢如何影响对民主进程的承诺，以及政治制度如何放大或削弱这些影响。

The second half of the twentieth century has seen a rise in the number of democracies around the world as well as increased opportunities for citizens to influence decisionmaking in them. Because the relationship between citizens and their government is one of the fundamental issues in the study of democratic politics, public (dis)satisfaction with the democratic process and support for democratic institutions are an area of research that is ever more critical for our understanding of how and how well contemporary democracies function.Building on research initiated in 1995, the purposes of the proposed project are to gather, analyze, and report data about how citizens' status as part of the political majority (winners) or political minority (losers) affects satisfaction with the political system and support for political institutions in over 50 contemporary democracies. Specific issues to be addressed include: (1) the pattern of variation in support among winners and losers across established and newly emerging democracies; (2) the dynamics of variation in winners' and losers' satisfaction over time; and (3) how political institutions mediate the relationship between winner/loser status and political support.The proposed research combines study of institutional/contextual and individual-level influences on political support in a systematic fashion. Specifically, it combines an examination of democratic institutions and processes, individuals' voting behavior, and attitudes toward the political system. As such, the research fills a crucial gap between earlier studies that have focused separately on individual-level, systemic, or procedural influences on political support. Concentrating on elections as the central mechanism of citizen influence in democracies, the project is designed to investigate how elections produce winners and losers in the public mind, how winning and losing affects commitment to the democratic process, and how the political system works to amplify or dampen these effects.