The stability and performance of a democracy are dependent on citizens' willingness to support their political system, as both political institutions and individual representatives require a minimum level of trust from citizens to whom they are accountable for. One key indicator of system support is citizens' satisfaction with the way democracy functions in their country. This survey item, often employed in comparative analyses is consistently found associated with numerous discrete salient predictors. Notwithstanding the importance of these correlates, it is still not clear which of these correlates robustly predict people's satisfaction with democracy and whether or not these associations are robust across cases and time. In this paper we three key hypotheses pertaining to citizens’ satisfaction with their national democracy. First, we will assess the differences between electoral winners and losers in terms of their satisfaction with the functioning of democracy. Next, we will test the associations between the degree of accountability, representativeness and voters-party issue congruence and public satisfaction with democracy. Finally, we will address the conditional effect political institutions have on citizens’ a-priori satisfaction with democracy. Our findings suggest that by-and-large, all three hypotheses are supported by empirical evidence. Furthermore, the multi-level model reveals several noteworthy dynamics. First, we found that political and economic context had substantial a-priori influence on citizens' satisfaction with democracy. Second, we find that the adequacy of the supply of electoral alternatives is a key proxy in predicting levels of satisfaction. Finally, we find that data on both levels - individual characteristics and context - and interactions between these two levels are significantly correlated with voters' satisfaction with the democratic performance.
