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During the last decade, democratic backsliding (DB) has become a worrying phenomenon worldwide. This article addresses this topic by focusing on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). An overview of the literature on DB in this region has identified a relevant lacuna: the lack of attention to the role political support indicators (democratic satisfaction, government trust) may play in DB processes. Testing several hypotheses through different random regression models applied to CEE countries for the period 2005–2021, an unexpected puzzle emerges: contrary to the expectations, we find that a greater government trust contributes to DB. Building on several consolidated findings of the system support theory and the classic democratisation literature, we address this puzzle, identifying temporal phases, mechanisms and causal relations and stressing the relevance of interaction processes among a complex set of causal factors to explain DB processes in CEE.

This study investigates whether attitudes towards government and populist views have an impact on voting choices in national referenda. Direct democracy implies a heavy influence of leaders, parties and government in voting choices. Attitudes towards the incumbent government are particularly important in this process since the government often take clear positions on referendum and popular consultations. In the case of the Italian constitutional referendum of 2016 this situation appeared clear, since the government coalition inspired the reform and voted it within the Parliament before the Referendum. Although governmental forces spent many resources, the result of the referendum rejected the reform and generated the prime minister resignation. The origins of such voting results are still debated by analysts. Their analyses focus on leaders, parties and government performance. We decided to look specifically at this last explanation of voting choice by investigating in depth how government ideological proximity and the judgments on government performance (on the whole and in specific policy domains) have had an effect on voting choice. Have respondent’s identification with a party within the government coalition had an effect on voting? Is this effect bigger than evaluation of governmental performance? How ideology intervenes in such relationships? And does governmental performance affect voting more on the basis of economic or populist factors? The present study will address these questions on the Italian constitutional referendum of 2016, by shading light on the effect of attitudes towards the government in referendum vote.

How do economic recessions affect European citizens’ attitudes towards environmental policies? In this article we investigate the attitudes of European citizens towards environmental protection considering its importance both at individual and country levels and adopting a longitudinal view. In light of the existing research on the link between pro-environmental attitudes and economic affluence of societies, including Ronald Inglehart’s theory of post-materialism, we hypothesise that levels of economic well-being as well as trust in political institutions are important drivers of Europeans’ attitudes towards environmental protection. Taking into consideration some macroeconomic indicators and the environmental attitude of public opinion, our main results show that even in time of crises, citizens’ pro-environmental attitudes persist in terms of importance, both at country and individual levels.

Supplemental material, Supplemental Material1 for Citizens, immigration and the EU as a shield by Nicolò Conti, Danilo Di Mauro and Vincenzo Memoli in European Union Politics

How does media use and individualsʼ senses of political efficacy affect their attitudes towards immigrants in southern Europe? While studies of the media offer contrasting results concernin...

Although often unable to satisfactorily solve the problem, democracy (especially enduring democracy) is commonly believed to reduce corruption. Yet, both Transparency International and the World Bank continue to attach a high risk of corruption to Latin American countries: corruption and impunity remain prevalent in the area, despite consolidating democratic regimes and recent anticorruption reforms. Using level of democracy and its endurance, as well as information on the perceptions of democratic performance and corruption obtained from the Latinobarometro, we analyzed a panel data covering the period 2005-2010 in 14 Latin American countries. Our main results show that levels of democracy and citizens' assessment of government fairness have a positive impact on corruption. However, satisfaction towards democracy has the opposite effect: when citizens believed democratic governments and public administrations to be efficient, they also perceived that gains against corruption had significantly decreased.

Beginning with the Trilateral Commission report in 1975, recent studies have demonstrated increasing dissatisfaction with the performance of democracies across Europe (Crozier, et al. 1975). Citizens have become increasingly mistrustful of politicians, skeptical about institutions, and disenchanted with the effectiveness of the democratic process (Dalton, 2004). Recent longitudinal studies, analyzing satisfaction with democracy of European citizens showed that in many European countries satisfaction with national democracies flourishes and increases in time (see Wagner et al. 2009, Bellucci et al. 2012). At the same time, the scientific has been characterized by the development of different theoretical perspectives that all utilize different approaches in order to define and explain support for democracy. We will first attempt to understand what citizens effectively support when they say that they support “democracy.” In order to answer this question, we will briefly review the literature on popular support for democracy and then empirically explore the main theoretical model adopted in support for democracy studies in order to understand if it still explains today'ʹs empirical reality of Europe. In the second section we will try to assess where each European country is placed on key dimensions of support for democracy. In that way, we will be able to see where Austria stands within the European family in terms of support for democracy. Our third section explores the possibility of deliberative mini publics to improve popular support for democracy. The data we will analyze are produced by a deliberative poll experiment, EuroPolis, which took place in 2009 and involved random sample of European citizens. We seek to understand not only whether the citizens could become more supportive of the political system, after participating in deliberative process, as assumed by deliberative model of democracy, we also aim to learn something about the differences between the Austrian and European sample.