The previous section showed the importance of macroeconomic conditions in shaping confidence in democratic institutions. In this section, the analyses move to the individual level in order to examine the micro social and economic factors that may prove to be important in this equation. In particular, we need to know the relative importance of objective economic factors, such as the material wealth that the person has, measured against subjective economic factors, such as their own feelings of economic satisfaction. The relative effects of these economic factors must also be estimated once other things have been taken into account, notably the human capital that they possess and their country of residence.
It is obviously impractical to analyse each country separately—and, in any event, we are more interested in identifying any underlying commonalities that may exist between the countries rather than country-specific effects. Two separate analyses are conducted, one for the group of ten countries that were earlier categorized as established, and one for the groupofninecountriesthatwerecategorizedasunstable.63 Theindependentvariablesformfourgroups.First,there are three variables reflecting economic position and satisfaction, the major focus of the analysis. These are composed of three measures of objective economic position—whether the respondent is a labour-force participant or unemployed, and total household income before tax—and one measure of economic satisfaction.64 Popular expectations of government are