Impetus for Reform

Citizen satisfaction with the democratic process is helpful for the general functioning of all sectors of the government, citizen morale, and trust in the rule of law, since, in a democratic system, each citizen vote has equal influence in the political process and an equal impact on composition of the government. However, in many countries there has been a decline in citizen satisfaction with democracy.  

What impacts citizen satisfaction is difficult to measure. Factors impacting citizen morale include, but are not limited to, the perceived non-responsiveness of politicians, the perceived non-accountability of politicians, and the perceived loss of voters’ political efficacy. An increasing percentage of citizens believe that politicians are merely concerned with the retention or the development of power, that politicians do not care about what the people think or about making real impact, and citizens believe that they are unable to affect the political decision making process. In other words, citizen concern has been generated by a belief that the responsiveness of the political system is vanishing, along with voters’ perceived political efficacy

This trend is fairly well documented in political science literature. Some scholars have argued that by discounting voters’ political demands, political systems now resemble oligopolies in which the voting results are determined by only a few voters (Katz and Mair 1995). The fact that political parties and politicians are perceived to discount voters’ demands not only attests to low political efficacy and limited responsiveness by the system, but it also provides a compelling explanation for the emergence of protest politics.  Protest politics has manifested in many different forms, for example, leading to the emergence of protest parties-challenging the system parties, diminishing levels of political participation, the creation of new forms of political participation, and above all else, leading to lower voter turnout during election cycles.