Porovnání spokojenosti voličů v situacích dvoustranického a vícestranického systému: experimentální simulace volebních rozhodnutí

Thesis is focused on analyzing the impact of institutional settings of electoral systems on voters' subjective satisfaction with political outcomes. Emphasis is placed primarily on comparing majority (two-party) and proportional (multi-party) systems in the context of government program formation. The thesis aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how the necessity of post-election coalition compromise and possible election fatigue influence the perception of government legitimacy, even in situations where the voter's preferred party wins the election (so-called winner's consent). The theoretical part focuses on economic theory of politics, public choice theory, the median voter model, and psychological aspects of electoral behavior. The empirical part then analyzes data obtained through an original inter-subject experiment conducted on the Qualtrics platform. Using a simulation of post-election negotiations and regression analysis (OLS), this thesis evaluates the impact of institutional design on the satisfaction of 136 respondents. The results unequivocally confirm the existence of the psychological costs of compromise: voters in a multiparty system exhibit significantly higher dissatisfaction than those in a two-party system. A crucial finding is that this decline in democratic satisfaction does not depend on actual programmatic concessions, but stems from the very principle of power-sharing and the necessity of forming a coalition. Data refute the influence of the Czech status quo bias. Respondents demonstrably preferred the more straightforward and exclusive two-party model.