Towards an Economic Understanding of Political Satisfaction.

Using public opinion and macroeconomic data for Western Europe from 1973 to 2001, the paper examines the effect of economic performance on popular political satisfaction. Results from bivariate and multivariate regressions show that measures of economic performance such as growth in real GDP and rising unemployment are estimated to have statistically significant and noteworthy effects on mean aggregate political satisfaction. However, evidence is also found that suggests that the relationship between economic performance and political satisfaction changes as a function of governments' social spending commitments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]