ABSTRACT
Interpreting the results of this study, one needs to keep in mind that the process of institutionalization mainly started in the 1990s, quite recently, and long-term effects of EU institutions as demoi-cracy-making institutions are a question to be addressed in the future. The findings suggest that privileged access to the national political systems is
associated with higher values of internal political efficacy. This effect seems to be overridden only in very inclusive national systems; i.e., systems that grant access to the national political system to all TCNs and not only to EU citizens. In turn, this finding suggests that EU citizenship has significant effects on exclusive national systems. For the study of demoi-cracy, it seems to be an important and prospective finding that EU citizenship can level the effects of exclusive national systems for moving EU citizens. For satisfaction with democracy, the empirical results suggest that non-nationals
are, averaged across countries, more satisfied with the way democracy works in the country as are nationals. Particularly, stTCNs are, on average,more likely to be satisfied with the way democracy works, a result that could be explained by systematically different expectations towards democracy and that needs further scrutiny. Similarly, the finding that politically interested EU movers are less satisfied with the system (compared to disinterested EU movers) could indicate that politically interested EU movers have higher expectations towards the system. EU movers are not fully enfranchized in the member state of their residence, a fact that has beenmentioned as problematic inmany policy documents and comments by scholars in the field (e.g., Bellamy 2012; Kostakopoulou 2012) and could be perceived as problematic by politically interested persons.
