ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of candidates, political parties and election administrators in shaping fundamental regime attitudes. It explores the linkages between citizens experiences of the way they select democratic leaders and their attitudes towards the larger regime in which those elections are nested. A module of questions introduced into the standard Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP) questionnaire in 2004 allows us to address these issues empirically. Political parties continue to structure many areas of democratic life, including many citizen attitudes. It might generate a range of psychological effects that draw people into the electoral process by interesting them in the election campaign, or more simply by creating a psychological bond of identification with voters. Polarization also indirectly affects other forms of campaign activity because voters who have been contacted by a party are also more likely to attend rallies or persuade others how to vote. Alienation and marginalization, in contrast, resulted in withdrawal from political activity.
