This report examines how public policies and people’s experiences with public services shape political support and participation across Europe. Drawing on the capability approach and applying the receiver–doer–judge (RDJ) framework, it conceptualizes public services as potential conversion factors of democracy. From this perspective, institutions not only mitigate socio-economic risks (receiver), but can also enable meaningful agency (doer) and recognize citizens’ evaluative capacity (judge).
The analysis is based on novel survey data collected within the INVOLVE project in 2024, which captures people’s perceptions of public policies and their experiences with public services. Overall, perceptions of public policies are mixed. Respondents express the highest levels of dissatisfaction with access to housing and, in many countries, with healthcare, while evaluations of other policy domains tend to be more neutral. Support for increased public spending and stronger government responsibility is higher for universal policies, such as health and education, and lower for more targeted policies, including unemployment benefits and poverty relief.
The majority of respondents used at least one public service in the previous year, most commonly healthcare services, and a substantial minority encountered barriers to access, including waiting times and opening hours. Around one in five respondents report difficulties when using digitalized public services, with considerable variation across countries. Satisfaction with service outcomes is generally high for widely used services, but notably lower for targeted services such as employment activation, social housing, and immigration services. With regards to procedural aspects, most users report that services were easy to find and access, and that they were treated respectfully. However, far fewer felt they had meaningful choice among providers or influence over how services were delivered. In RDJ terms, public services are generally experienced as providing support (receiver) and acknowledging users’ judgement (judge), but much less as empowering users to act (doer).
Linking these patterns to democratic inputs, the report finds a positive association between overall satisfaction with public policies and political trust, satisfaction with democracy, and political efficacy. In contrast, the relationship with political participation is weaker. Satisfaction is only weakly and positively related to institutional and civic participation, but weakly and negatively related to non-institutional participation. Satisfaction with the outcomes of personally used public services is less strongly related to political support and efficacy and shows no clear association with participation. Procedural experiences aligned with the RDJ framework are somewhat more strongly related to political support and political efficacy, suggesting that respectful and fair treatment is associated with a more positive view of democracy. However, neither positive outcomes nor high-quality procedural experiences consistently translate into higher levels of political participation. In some cases, procedural fairness is associated with lower probabilities of non-electoral participation, indicating that more negative experiences may coincide with higher levels of political protest.
To move beyond individual perceptions and experiences, the analysis then turns to a second dataset that captures variation in public policy outcomes at the country level. These multi-level analyses combine individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) (2006-2023) with country-level indicators from Eurostat to examine how differences in policy performance across countries and over time relate to political support and participation.
The multilevel analyses show that stronger policy outcomes in housing, health, education, and employment are independently associated with higher levels of political support, even after accounting for individuals’ own evaluations of public policies. Some indicators – notably housing affordability and healthy life expectancy – are also associated with higher voter turnout. At the same time, and in line with the participation patterns observed in the INVOLVE survey, weaker policy outcomes – particularly in housing and employment – are linked to higher levels of political participation outside elections, as citizens are more likely to engage in non-institutional activities such as public demonstrations.
Overall, this report concludes that strengthening public policies and improving everyday public service encounters are promising routes to bolstering political support and citizens’ sense of efficacy, particularly when services recognize users as receivers, doers and judges. However, improvements should not be expected to raise political participation outside elections.