Democratic reforms and legitimacy in established Western democracies

Abstract

The analysis of the relationship between legitimacy and reform is complex. This is because ’political reform’ consists of an array of institutional reforms.The general question guiding this project is whether the introduction of reform helps boost the legitimacy of the democratic system: does the impact of reform on legitimacy vary with the type of reform, or with the process of reform. To answer these questions, this study also seeks to establish how many reforms have taken place, what types of reform have been introduced and under what circumstances these reforms occur.