Explaining Institutional Condence
One explanation why government policy outputs in general, and the economy in particular, has received relatively little
attention in studies of institutional confidence is the view, originating in the earliest empirical studies of democracy, that
popular support for democratic norms has its origins in political culture. A more recent view identifies economic
performance as the main-spring for how citizens evaluate their governments and, in turn, for how they rate their
democratic institutions. Many studies have demonstrated the pivotal role of popular economic expectations in deciding
the fate of incumbent governments in established democracies (Lewis-Beck 1988; Fiorina 1981). Governments that
are perceived as delivering wealth and prosperity to their voters are more likely to be re-elected, while those that are
perceived as depressing economic conditions through their policies are likely to be replaced. In general, it is collective
rather than individual judgements that have most weight in the popular economic calculus, and those judgements are
usually (though not exclusively) retrospective rather than prospective.53
In evaluating the influence of economic conditions on political behaviour, there is a crucial distinction between
economic perception and economic reality. Considerable evidence suggests that voters believe that it is a central
responsibility of government to deliver high levels of economic performance. Since economic performance is judged
by collective (sociotropic) rather than individual (egocentric) criteria, popular perceptions about the economy are
shaped principally by the mass media and through an assessment of national economic conditions, and less by
individual economic circumstances. Since these perceptions are mainly collective, they relate directly to governments
and also, to some degree, to political institutions. But the linkages remain