Democratic support and globalisation

This chapter explores the impact of globalization on satisfaction with democracy in a comparative perspective. It explicitly investigates whether globalization fosters or constrains democratic support and if the potential negative effects diminish once countries compensate for them. The analyses rely on data collected by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and the KOF index of globalization. The data allows a test of individual‐ and contextual‐level effects on democratic support. Multi‐level logistic regressions analyse the data. The results suggest a positive impact of globalization and its disaggregate measures on citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. But, they also reveal group differences in support across income and education groups. Those with low income or lower levels of education seem to be significantly less satisfied with democracy as globalization increases, in comparison with their counterparts. Although significant, the differences are too small to confidently conclude that these findings support constraint theory.