Resumen de Democratic Legitimacy: Concepts, Measures, Outcomes
The chapter discusses concepts of legitimacy and different ways of translating a concept into measurement. It argues for a balance measure of legitimacy relating demands and evaluations of a variety of democratic characteristics and compares it to a product and a proportion measure of legitimacy. The balance measure is applied to twenty-nine countries analyzing the legitimacy of the liberal, the social democratic, and the direct democracy visions of democracy. Results show high legitimacy of the reality of liberal democracy and lower legitimacy for the social democratic and direct democracy vision in Europe. On average, Scandinavian countries are at the top and a number of new democracies at the bottom of legitimacy perceptions of their citizens.
