Does the democratic performance really matter for regime support? Evidence from the post-communist Member States of the European Union

Figures & data

Figure 1. Regime support across CEE countries, country-level mean values 2004–2019. Sources: Standard Eurobarometer survey data 2004–2019. Notes: Data for “satisfaction with democracy” 2008 is missing, as the survey item was not included by EB in any of the two Standard EB surveys 2008. For comparative purposes, mean values of regime support across the CEE (N = 11) is also included in the figure.

Table 1. Regime support and democracy development correlation, 2004–2019.

	Trust in National Governmant	Democracy satisfaction
Bulgaria	−0.04	−0.59*
Croatia	−0.05	−0.31
Czech Republic	−0.28	−0.58*
Estonia	−0.31	−0.19
Hungary	−0.44*	−0.67**
Latvia	0.01	0.23
Lithuania	−0.52*	−0.61**
Poland	−0.72**	−0.57*
Romania	−0.31	−0.41
Slovakia	0.31	−0.24
Slovenia	−0.59**	−0.56*

Notes: Pearson’s correlation estimates; One-tailed test of significance. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01.

Table 2. Predicting varying country levels of regime support 2004–2019.^a

Dependent variable	Trust in national government			Satisfaction with national democracy
Between-country effects	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3
Democratic quality
Electoral Democracy Index	0.03 (0.49)			1.64** (0.43)
Liberal Democracy Index		0.10 (0.37)			0.97* (0.41)
Freedom House Index			0.21 (0.78)			1.90 (0.88)
Economic quality
Unemployment	0.09 (1.01)	0.02 (0.93)	0.14 (0.82)	−2.10* (0.90)	−1.26 (1.02)	−0.22 (0.92)
GDP per capita	−0.98* (0.42)	−1.01* (0.40)	−1.00* (0.38)	−0.91* (0.37)	−0.67 (0.44)	−0.51 (0.43)
Institutional quality
Income inequality	−1.35 (0.73)	−1.35 (0.72)	−1.33 (0.72)	−1.07 (0.65)	−0.93 (0.80)	−0.56 (0.81)
Non-corruption	1.64** (0.44)	1.59** (0.46)	1.58** (0.47)	0.40 (0.39)	0.38 (0.51)	0.36 (0.53)
Within-country effects
Democratic performance
Electoral Democracy Index	−0.22 (0.13)			−0.25* (0.12)
Liberal Democracy Index		−0.18 (0.10)			−0.18* (0.09)
Freedom House Index			−0.37 (0.20)			−0.51** (0.18)
Economic performance
Unemployment	−0.88*** (0.22)	−0.88*** (0.22)	−0.91*** (0.22)	−1.27*** (0.21)	−1.28*** (0.21)	−1.29*** (0.20)
GDP per capita	−0.17 (0.12)	−0.16 (0.12)	−0.19 (0.12)	0.10 (0.12)	0.10 (0.12)	0.06 (0.12)
Institutional performance
Income inequality	−0.00 (0.36)	0.04 (0.36)	−0.02 (0.36)	0.46 (0.32)	0.52 (0.33)	0.45 (0.32)
Non-corruption	0.35* (0.15)	0.34* (0.15)	0.39** (0.15)	0.58*** (0.14)	0.57*** (0.14)	0.63*** (0.14)
Random effects
Residual (Null model)	66.62*** (7.33)	66.62*** (7.33)	66.62*** (7.33)	92.43*** (10.60)	92.43*** (10.60)	92.43***(10.60)
Residual (Full model)	46.05*** (5.54)	45.97*** (5.53)	45.90*** (5.52)	35.27*** (0.44)	35.27*** (4.44)	34.44*** (4.34)
Intercept (Null model)	72.04*** (32.50)	72.04*** (32.50)	72.04*** (32.50)	82.94*** (38.04)	82.94*** (38.04)	82.94***(38.04)
Intercept (Full model)	28.13*** (13.38)	27.46*** (13.08)	27.76*** (13.21)	21.91*** (10.48)	34.94*** (16.06)	36.91***(16.84)
Pseudo R-squares
Between	0.61	0.62	0.62	0.74	0.58	0.56
Within	0.31	0.31	0.31	0.62	0.62	0.63
Countries	11	11	11	11	11	11
Observations	176	176	176	163	163	163

Sources: Own elaboration, Standard Eurobarometer, Eurostat, V-Dem, Freedom House and Transparency International.

Notes: Linear mixed model (LMM) regressions. Regression estimates unstandardised. Maximum likelihood estimates. Standard errors in parentheses. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. Pseudo R-square values computed based on the guidelines provided by Lahuis et al. (2014). Effects that are statistically significant in bold.

^a Only the findings from the analyses including control variables are presented in the table. However, it should be noted that without the control variables there were also statistically significant relations between all three measurements of democratic performance and trust in government within countries over time.

Figure A1. Democratic performance across CEE countries (adjusted scales), country-level values 2004–2019.Sources: V-Dem and Freedom House.Notes: The V-Dem scales have been adjusted for the empirical purpose in the statistical analyses. Hence, a V-Dem value of for instance 0.11 has been changed to 11.

Table A1. Descriptive statistics of the variables used in the statistical model.

Variables	Level	Obeserv.	Mean	S.D.	Min	Max
Trust in government	Country-year	176	29.6	11.8	10	71
Satisfaction with democracy	Country-year	163	38.0	13.3	14	70
Electoral Democracy Index (EDI)	Country-mean	11	80.6	7.3	67	90
Liberal Democracy Index (LDI)	Country-mean	11	70.8	9.5	51	84
Freedom House Index	Country-mean	11	88.5	4.4	82	95
GDP per capita in PPS (EU28=100)	Country-mean	11	41.7	12.6	20.2	67.4
Unemployment (%)	Country-mean	11	8.9	2.1	5.6	12.4
Non-corruption (CPI)	Country-mean	11	50.5	8.0	40	67
Income inequality (Gini Index)	Country-mean	11	30.7	4.6	23.8	35.9
Electoral Democracy Index (EDI)	Country-year	176	−0.1	4.9	−24	12
Liberal Democracy Index (LDI)	Country-year	176	0.2	6.2	−25	16
Freedom House Index	Country-year	176	−0.1	3.2	−15	8
GDP per capita in PPS (EU28=100)	Country-year	175	−0.2	6.4	−24.6	16.3
Unemployment (%)	Country-year	176	0.0	3.1	−6.2	9.7
Non-corruption (CPI)	Country-year	176	−0.1	5.3	−18	11
Income inequality (Gini Index)	Country-year	149	−0.0	1.6	−4.4	5.8

Notes: Observ. = observations, S.D. = standard deviation, Min = minimum, Max = maximum. Satisfaction with democracy values missing for 2008 (all), 2011–2012 (Croatia). GDP per capita values missing for 2019 (Croatia). Income inequality index values missing for 2004 (Slovenia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria), 2005 (Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania), 2006–2009 (Croatia), 2019 (Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia).

Eurobarometer. 2004–2019. “European Commission and European Parliament, Brussels.” Standard Eurobarometer Surveys 62.0 (2004)–91.5 (2019). TNS Opinion & Social. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne.

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Lahuis, David M., J. Hartman Michael, Shotaro Hakoyama, and Patrick C. Clark. 2014. “Explained Variance Measures for Multilevel Models.” Organizational Research Methods 17 (4): 433–451. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114541701.

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