ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Comparative Governance
This article is part of the Research TopicResearching Political Legitimacy: Concepts, Theories, Methods and Empirical StudiesView all 11 articles
Rethinking Democratic Dissatisfaction: A Citizen-Centred Evaluation of Input, Throughput, and Output Legitimacy of the Political System
Provisionally accepted
- 1Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
- 2Universite de Namur, Namur, Belgium
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In recent decades, scholars have underlined the decline in democratic support and satisfaction among citizens. To study such a decline, researchers typically mobilize classic survey items asked in comparative surveys such as support for democracy and satisfaction with democracy. This research explores another path to move beyond these items to better grasp the subject of democratic dissatisfaction among citizens. Specifically, the research explores the extent to which citizens evaluate the input, throughput, and output of their political system differently. Using Latent Profile Analysis on data from Belgium, the findings show that a significant portion of citizens tend to assess the input/throughput/output of the political system distinctly. These results suggest that reforms aimed at reducing democratic dissatisfaction could be more effectively targeted by focusing on specific dimensions of the political system.
Keywords: Democratic dissatisfaction, input, Output legitimacy, political system, throughput
Received: 17 Jul 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Talukder. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: David Talukder
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