Party Competition and Coalition Government at the Regional Level: The Effect on Citizen Satisfaction.

Theory: Majoritarian and proportional visions of democracy value party competition and coalition government differently. The majoritarian vision puts a premium on decisive, accountable one-party government; the proportional vision emphasizes the better representativeness attained by coalitions. Data: Using election and survey data from German and Spanish regions, this paper compares coalitions to one-party cabinets and different coalition governments to each other. Ideological polarization within cabinets is measured using expert scores. Results: The analysis demonstrates that citizens of German and Spanish regions evaluate one-party governments more favorably than coalitions, all else equal. In the German case, citizen satisfaction also correlates negatively with cabinet polarization. Conclusion: The findings imply that government effectiveness and cohesion matter more than ideology and interest representation at the regional level, and supports the theory of a trade-off between representativeness and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]