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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY
Pathologies of
Democratic Frustration
Voters and Elections Between
Desire and Dissatisfaction
Sarah Harrison
Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology
Series Editors
Paul Nesbitt-Larking, Huron College, University of Western Ontario,
London, Canada
Catarina Kinnvall, Department of Political Science, Lund University,
Lund, Sweden
Tereza Capelos, Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security,
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Henk Dekker, Leiden University, Professor Emeritus of Political Science,
Leiden, The Netherlands
The Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology book series profiles a range
of innovative contributions that investigate the leading political issues
and perspectives of our time. The academic field of political psychology
has been developing for almost fifty years and is now a well-established
subfield of enquiry in the North American academy. In the context of new
global forces of political challenge and change as well as rapidly evolving
political practices and political identities, Palgrave Studies in Polit-
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profiling studies from Europe and the broader global context. From
a theoretical perspective, the series incorporates constructionist, histor-
ical, (post)structuralist, and postcolonial analyses. Methodologically, the
series is open to a range of approaches to political psychology. Psycho-
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Finotello ambra.finotello@palgrave.com.
Sarah Harrison
Pathologies
of Democratic
Frustration
Voters and Elections Between Desire and
Dissatisfaction
Sarah Harrison
Department of Government
London School of Economics
and Political Science
London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology

ISBN 978-3-031-24234-2 ISBN 978-3-031-24235-9 (eBook)
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Acknowledgments
This book asks some fundamental questions about the relationship citi-
zens have with the democracies. Time and time again when speaking to
people in the research we conducted as part of the Electoral Psychology
Observatory (EPO) research programme, I found that citizens would
spontaneously refer to their sense of frustration with their system, with
the processes, the politicians and their parties, and the general state of
democratic affairs in their country.
This book is based on research that was partly supported by several
grants, including First and Foremost (Economic and Social Research
Council Standard Grant: ES/S000100/1), the Age of Hostility (Euro-
pean Research Council Advanced grant: 788304, PI Michael Bruter), and
an LSE Department of Government seed research grant.
I would like to thank my colleagues who assisted me in conducting
the fieldwork, in particular Sandra Obradovic for the qualitative work and
Adam Ozer for the experiment. Within the case studies, focus groups were
supported by a wonderful team of research assistants, including Ginny
Moruzzi, Luke Mansillo, Courtney Leung, and Rania Putri.
The surveys were expertly conducted by Opinium, with particular
thanks to long-term colleagues James Endersby, James Crouch, and Adam
Drummond who have continued to encourage the research we conduct
at the Electoral Psychology Observatory. It was a pleasure to work on
improving my initial ideas with Ambra Finotello, executive editor of poli-
tics at Springer who has accompanied the project from the start. I am also
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful recommendations

that strengthened the manuscript and the copyeditors for their assistance
with the final edits. Moreover, any academic is indebted to the whole
network of colleagues who help make our work better and more enjoy-
able every day, including my academic and professional colleagues from
the Department of Government at the LSE, and the School’s excellent
Research and Innovation division for all of its support over the years. I am
also thankful to James Robins, who captured the image featured on the
front cover during one of our EPO visual experiments. In my case, I am
also grateful for the enthusiastic support I have received from practitioner
colleagues from our partner Electoral Commissions with whom discus-
sions on institutional responses and potential resolution to Democratic
Frustration have been invaluable.
I would also like to thank my wonderful family for their unwavering
belief in me and my crazy ways (ice swimming included!). I could not
have done this without your patient support, your infectious laughter,
and enormous hugs.
Finally, I am immensely indebted to my wonderful colleague Michael
Bruter, who has been a continuous source of inspiration and support,
reassurance, and more importantly, a great friend.
Contents
1 Anatomy of Democratic Frustration 1

What Is Pathologies of Democratic Frustration About? 1
Paradoxes of Democratic Crises 4
The Psychological Concept of Frustration 6
Mapping Democratic Frustration vis-à-vis Other Models
of Democratic Crises 8
Dimensions of Democratic Frustration 12
Modelling Democratic Frustration at the Individual Level:
Socio-Demographic, Psychological, Political, and Electoral
Psychology Determinants 15
Modelling Systemic Level Determinants of Democratic
Frustration 21
Withdrawal, Anger, and Aggression—A Model
of the Behavioural Consequences of Democratic Frustration 22
From Hopelessness to Hostility: Mapping the Potential
Attitudinal Consequences of Democratic Frustration 24
Psychological Models of the Evolution of Frustration 26
Diagnosing Frustration 27
Frustration and the First Vote 28
Democratic Frustration, Guilt, and Self-Blame 29
Cycles of Frustration and of Democratic Frustration 31
Therapeutics of Frustration 32
vii
viii CONTENTS
How Can We Explain the Determinants, Dynamics,

and Consequences of Democratic Frustration? 33
References 35
2 Models and Operationalisation of Democratic
Frustration 41
Democratic Frustration and Other Standards-Delivery Gap
Combinations 41
The Challenge of Operationalising Democratic Frustration
and Measuring Its Components and Dimensions 43
Overall Research Design Architecture 45
The Narrative Nature of Democratic Frustration: Two Sets
of Qualitative Measures 47
Spontaneous Open-Ended Evocations of Frustration
from Large Representative Samples of Citizens 48
Exploring the Discourse of Democratic Frustration: In-depth
Interviews 49
Quantitative Approaches 51
A Comparable Index of Democratic Frustration: Survey
Measures 52
Additional Survey Components 54
Unravelling the Cycle of Frustration—An Experiment 54
Additional Panel Study Survey 60
Case Selection 62
Risks and Advantages of Pilot Research Measurement 64
References 67
3 Nature of Democratic Frustration: Democratic Desire,
Standards, and Perceived Delivery in Action 69
Approaching the Nature of Frustration 69
Dimensions of Democratic Frustration: An Empirical
Analysis 71
Mapping Democratic Desire 73
Mapping the Democratic Delivery Gap 74
Mapping Democratic Frustration as an Interactive Object 77
Analytical Categories 78
Spontaneous Narratives of Dimensions of Frustration 79
The Nature of Democratic Frustration—How Is It
Experienced? 83
Democratic Frustration and Emotions 84
CONTENTS ix
Perceptions of Democratic Frustration in Self and Others 86

Democratic Frustration in Intimate Circles—Discussing
and Cultivating Frustration with Family and Friends 87
Managing Frustration—Expectations and Resolution 88
Democratic Frustration: Complex, Emotional,
and Disruptive Nature of Widely Acknowledged Phenomenon 90
References 91
4 Dynamics of Democratic Frustration: An Asymmetric
Bottomless Well 93
Dynamics of Democratic Frustration 93
An Experiment on the Nature of Democratic Frustration 94
Experimental Results 96
The Test of Time–How Stable Is Democratic Frustration? 100
Using Panel Data to Unravel the Dynamics of the Relationship
Between Frustration Components 106
Are Frustration Tunnels Lightless? 112
Breaking the Vicious Circle: Principles and Options 114
Addressing the Displacement-Frustration-Pathologies
Triangle? 115
References 117
5 Determinants of Democratic Frustration:
Socio-Demographic, Psychological, Behavioural,
and Electoral Psychology Factors 119
Dissecting Determinants of Democratic
Frustration—Individual and Combined Components
and Types of Predictors 119
Determinants of Democratic Desire 120
Determinants of the Democratic Delivery Gap 126
The Desire-Delivery Gap Interaction: Capturing the Causes
of Democratic Frustration 134
Qualitative Illustrations 144
Democratic Frustration—Unique Determinants
for a Unique Logic 146
Reference 147
x CONTENTS
6 Emergence of Democratic Frustration: The Case

of First-Time Voters 149
What’s so Special About First-Time Voters? 149
Age and the Frustration Cycle 153
Approach 155
Are First-Time Voters More or Less Democratically
Frustrated Than the Rest of the Population? 156
Determinants of Democratic Frustration Among First-Time
Voters 159
Behavioural Consequences of Democratic Frustration
Among First-Time Voters 165
Attitudinal Consequences of Democratic Frustration Among
First-Time Voters 166
Cycle of Bitterness 173
Unearthing the Initial Seed of Frustration: Findings
from the In-Depth Narrative Interviews 174
First Memories of Frustration 174
A Sometimes Anti-climactic First Vote 175
Unravelling the Cycle of Democratic Frustration
in First-Time Voters’ Own Words 179
Democratic Frustration and Life Cycle—Generational
Divides 180
Paradoxes of Cycles of Frustration 181
References 182
7 Behavioural and Attitudinal Consequences
of Democratic Frustration: The Withdrawal, Anger,
and Aggression Model 185
Why Could Democratic Frustration Matter? Typology
of Potential Consequences 185
Behavioural Consequences of Democratic Frustration 186
How Widespread Are the Behavioural Consequences
of Democratic Frustration? 188
The Impact of Dimensions of Democratic Frustration
on Withdrawal, Anger, and Aggression: Multivariate
Analysis 192
Narratives of the Behavioural Consequences of Democratic
Frustration 202
From Behavioural to Attitudinal Consequences 205
CONTENTS xi
Democratic Frustration and the Atmosphere of Elections 205

Democratic Frustration and Hopelessness 208
Democratic Frustration and Electoral Hostility 210
Democratic Frustration and Compliance 212
Everyday Attitudinal Consequences of Democratic
Frustration—qualitative Evidence 214
Conclusion: The Threat of an Ever-More-Consequential
Democratic Frustration 219
References 221
8 Contextualising Democratic Frustration: Unravelling
Narratives of Citizens’ Frustration in the US, UK,
Australia, and South Africa 223
Societal Expressions of Democratic Frustration 223
Split at Its Heart: Mutual Frustrations in Brexit Britain 224
A Wall of Frustration Across America: Mutual Frustration
in Trump America 241
Democratisation, Corruption, and Frustration in South
Africa 255
Protection and Restrictions at the End of the World?
Democratic Frustration in Australia in the Age
of the Coronavirus 261
Conclusion 267
References 268
9 Conclusions 271
The Bottomless Well of Democratic Frustration 272
Pathologies of Unhappiness 273
What Makes Democratic Frustration so Different
from Democratic Dissatisfaction? 275
What Does Democratic Frustration Tell Us About
Democratic Crises and the Future of Democracies? 276
A Very Consequential Frustration—and Relatively
Inconsequential Ideological Gap 278
The Emergence, Causes, and Cycle of Democratic Frustration 279
Democratic Frustration in the Age of COVID-19 282
Do Current Paths Towards Democratic Improvement Miss
the Plot of Democratic Frustration?—the Example of the EU 283
Can Democratic Frustration Ever Be Remedied? 288
References 290
xii CONTENTS
Appendices 291
Bibliography 333
Index 343
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The concept of democratic frustration 15

Fig. 1.2 Model of democratic frustration—determinants, dynamics,
and consequences 35
Fig. 2.1 Research design 45
Fig. 2.2 The frustration cycle experiment 58
Fig. 3.1 Dimensions of democratic desire 74
Fig. 3.2 Dimensions of democratic delivery deficit 75
Fig. 4.1 Experimental results 97
Fig. 4.2 Stability of frustration components over time—panel data 102
Fig. 4.3 Stability of democratic frustration over time—panel data 103
Fig. 4.4 Increase in means and standard deviations of democratic
frustration in the UK 2017–2019—time series
representative data 104
Fig. 4.5 Panel change to frustration components
over time—individual responses 105
Fig. 4.6 Panel change to democratic frustration
over time—individual responses 107
Fig. 5.1 Frustration components by gender 120
Fig. 5.2 Level of democratic frustration by gender (USA) 136
Fig. 7.1 Consequences of frustration—the withdrawal, anger,
aggression model 189
Fig. 7.2 Comparative behavioural consequences of democratic
frustration 195
Fig. 7.3 Summary of behavioural consequences of the dimensions
of democratic frustration 198
xiii
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Conceptual model of democratic frustration:

An interaction between standards and perceived delivery
deficit 43
Table 2.2 Quantitative measurement strategy for components
of democratic frustration 292
Table 2.3 Manipulation examples 293
Table 4.1 Correlation between panel changes in frustration
components (overall) 294
Table 4.2 Splitting correlation between delivery change
and standards change by negative and positive changes 110
Table 5.1 Correlations of components of democratic frustration
with ideology and political interest 121
Table 5.2 Personality and components of democratic frustration 123
Table 5.3 Regressions—determinants of components of frustration 125
Table 5.4A Regression determinants of democratic standards 132
Table 5.4B Regression determinants of democratic delivery 132
Table 5.5 Regressions determinants of democratic delivery deficit 134
Table 5.6 Correlations of dimensions of democratic frustration
with demographic, socio-political and psychological
predictors 136
Table 5.7 Personality and democratic frustration (US) 141
Table 5.8 Regressions determinants of democratic frustration 143
Table 6.1 Descriptives of democratic frustration: first-time voters
vs others 157
xv
xvi LIST OF TABLES
Table 6.2 Descriptives of democratic frustration: first-time voters

vs others 158
Table 6.3 Descriptives of democratic frustration components:
first-time voters vs others 158
Table 6.4 Regressions—determinants of components of frustration
first-time voters 160
Table 6.5 Regressions determinants of democratic frustration 164
Table 6.6 Dimensions of democratic frustration and their
consequences in the US—multivariate contributions 295
Table 6.7 Democratic frustration and electoral atmosphere 167
Table 6.8 Democratic frustration and hopelessness 169
Table 6.9 Democratic frustration and electoral hostility 170
Table 6.10 Democratic frustration and non-compliance 172
Table 7.1 Typology of the consequences of democratic frustration 187
Table 7.2A Dimensions of democratic frustration and their
consequences in the US—multivariate
contributions—true interaction 297
Table 7.2B Dimensions of democratic frustration and their
consequences in the US—multivariate
contributions—simplified model 299
Table 7.3 Democratic frustration and electoral atmosphere 207
Table 7.4 Democratic frustration and hopelessness 209
Table 7.5 Democratic frustration and electoral hostility 211
Table 7.6 Democratic frustration and non-compliance 213
CHAPTER 1
Anatomy of Democratic Frustration
What Is Pathologies
of Democratic Frustration About?
Sometimes, people use a word so perpetually that one stops hearing it.
How often has a husband or a wife, a friend, a parent realised—too late—
that for months or for years, their spouse, their friend, their child had used
words repeatedly that were telling them almost literally about the worry,
the problem, or the crisis that they were experiencing but that they had
failed to properly hear it and missed the obvious. They heard that there
was a problem of course, they knew that there was a discomfort or indeed
a “crisis”, but often, the human brain is content with approximation or
jumps at interpretation and displacement. Indeed, it is typically wired in
such a way as to intuitively project its own connotations over the words
of others instead of hearing them literally in their unique, very specific
meaning.
Take frustration, for instance. Often people will tell us that something
makes them feel frustrated, and we will simply hear that they are disap-
pointed or unhappy. Yet, there is much more in the concept of frustration
than mere unhappiness or even disappointment, and someone who tells
us that they feel frustrated about a situation gives us a lot more infor-
mation about their feelings and the structure of their emotions than the
mere dissatisfaction that it entails.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
S. Harrison, Pathologies of Democratic Frustration,
Palgrave Studies in Political Psychology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24235-9_1
2 S. HARRISON
One does not usually feel frustrated that they broke a leg, but they will
likely feel frustrated that they cannot walk. They rarely talk of frustration
when they catch a cold, but often do when they did not pass their exams,
especially if they have a feeling that they could have worked harder for
them. In other words, whilst dissatisfaction and negativity are inherent
components of frustration, they are not sufficient to constitute it.
Crucially, as we will see in pages to come, as much as dissatisfaction,
frustration requires the existence of a strong, almost irresistible desire
which is unmet. The reason one may feel frustrated about being stuck
home with a cast on their leg is that they very much desire being able
to walk instead and can envision exactly how wonderful and exciting life
would be if they were able to enjoy a walk in the sun. The reason they may
feel frustrated about having failed their exam is that they retrospectively
realise everything that they would have been able to do had in the past
weeks and so desire that they had. Furthermore, in both cases, the frus-
tration is not only related to dissatisfaction as an external phenomenon
and desire of it, but often entails an element of self-blame which makes
frustration pertain to the very definition of one’s own identity.
As it happens, as many scholars of democratic crises know, “frus-
tration” is one of the words that citizens of democratic states use
most frequently and spontaneously to describe their feelings vis-à-vis the
perceived dysfunctional nature of their political systems, personnel, and
outcomes and what they do or do not get out of them. This book, quite
simply, is about listening to this claim, to citizens’ statement that democ-
racy so often leaves them frustrated. This book is about taking that idea
seriously and at face value, and exploring the details of what it involves
systematically, analytically, and empirically, across four major democracies
(US, UK, Australia, and South Africa) at the start of the 2020s, before it
is potentially too late.1
As we will see throughout the book, looking at a model of “true”
democratic frustration as an alternative to models of democratic dissatis-
faction is, in fact, a complete change of perspective on the crisis between
citizens and their democratic systems for at least three reasons.
First, whilst dissatisfaction models predominantly focus on what is seen
as negative or dysfunctional in political systems, the democratic frustration
1 This book is based on research supported by the European Research Council and the
Economic and Social Research Council. Grant references: ERC ELHO Age of Hostility
Advanced Grant: 788304 and ESRC First and Foremost Standard Grant: ES/5000100/1.
1 ANATOMY OF DEMOCRATIC FRUSTRATION 3
model puts desire at the heart of the democratic crisis. This does not
merely mean that there is a “gap” between what citizens expect and what
they feel they get from political systems, but rather that desire acts as a
multiplier of the perceived effects of that very democratic gap.
A direct consequence of that is a second key difference: a shift from the
perspective that understanding democratic crisis is an institution-centric
quest to the idea that it requires a profound and careful understanding of
behavioural phenomena and the psychology of contemporary democratic
citizens. Thus, whilst dissatisfaction theories predominantly see percep-
tions of democratic systems as the “object” of citizens’ dissatisfaction,
the democratic frustration model addresses and encompasses theories of
identity and involves an element of emotional appetite and self-blame in
democratic crisis. It also speaks to how citizens appropriate the concept
and institution of democracy, how it works and ought to work, what it
brings them, and the perpetually evolving understanding of what it means
to them in the first place. In other words, democratic frustration puts citi-
zens themselves, their perceptions of their own role and contribution, at
the heart of their systemic dissatisfaction and therefore underlines a critical
introspective component in citizens’ democratic disenchantment.
Third, whilst dissatisfaction can be conceived as a largely conscious
phenomenon, frustration is by nature largely subconscious. This means
that there is an inherent mismatch between the true object of a person’s
frustration and what they perceive it to be. In turn, this implies that
researchers will need to rely on a combination of different instruments
if we are to understand whether citizens genuinely are democratically
frustrated and what this entails. Given the potential displacement of
the purported object of democratic dissatisfaction as well as of the way
democracies effectively function, it makes it even more arduous to under-
stand whether democratic frustration can ever be resolved or whether it
is instead condemned to perpetually move the goal post. That issue of a
potentially perpetually “moving target” raises a critical question for this
book about the very nature of the dynamics of democratic frustration.
This final point relates to a critical component of the present book, the
systematic dissection of the dynamics of frustration.
All those elements taken together have a further consequence. The
combination of the roles of desire, introspection, and subconscious
mechanisms crucially means that the people most likely to feel demo-
cratically frustrated are not quite the same as those simply expressing
systemic dissatisfaction. This change in nature of the main victims of
4 S. HARRISON
unfulfilling democratic systems also consequently entails an equally funda-

mental change in the remedies that can patch processes of democratic
frustration and return democratic political processes to their original
essence: bringing to citizens a sense of efficacy, fulfilment, and democratic
resolution.
The ambition of Pathologies of Democratic Frustration is thus simple.
In the next few chapters, I will assess whether the major crisis that virtually
all major consolidated and emerging democratic systems are facing at the
moment is a case of democratic frustration or not, and the implications
of such a diagnosis for our understanding of—and potential reactions
to—those crises. This first means understanding what this would involve
conceptually by looking at the psychological phenomenon of frustra-
tion and applying those psychological insights to democratic attitudes,
whilst contrasting them to other existing models of democratic dissatis-
faction. It then entails defining how we could capture and measure the
phenomenon of democratic frustration, its components as highlighted
above, and its possible dimensions. I will then empirically apply this model
in the context of four major contemporary democracies to test the nature,
dimensions, determinants, dynamics, cycle, and consequences of demo-
cratic frustration and even evaluate some of the responses which could
be used to mitigate it. This quest will rely on a mixture of quantitative
and qualitative, static, and dynamic, observational, narrative, and exper-
imental methods including survey, panel study, in-depth interviews, and
experiments.
This first chapter will delve into greater detail in the concept of demo-
cratic frustration as well as the nature of the democratic crises which
contemporary political systems seem to be facing and how compatible
they may be with democratic frustration theory.
Paradoxes of Democratic Crises

Democracy is in crisis, or so it is widely thought to be. Low levels of
voter turnout are often attributed to prevalent disillusionment among
citizens, widespread apathy, or a lack of efficacy. The rise of extremist
and populist parties has been unprecedented in many countries. Populist
forces such as the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość PiS (Law and Justice Party)
and Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej SO (Self Defence) in Poland and
in Hungary Fidesz—Magyar Polgári Szövetség (Hungarian Civic Alliance)
have dominated national politics for much of the recent decade, whilst
in Germany and Spain, parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland—

AfD (Alternative for Germany) and the Spanish far right party, Vox, have
emerged in systems where populist parties used to be virtually absent.
In the meantime, electoral victories for Donald Trump in 2016 in the
US and Brexit in the British referendum on European Union member-
ship conducted the same year were frequently referred to as populist
victories. Conversely, mass protest movements, from Extinction Rebel-
lion or anti-Brexit marches to the Hong Kong uprising against China’s
increasing control, the Yellow Vest movement in France, or violent
protests in Greece and Chile have rocked many streets, sometimes peace-
fully and sometimes violently. In short, contemporary democracies are
confronted with a very serious issue: citizens are increasingly disillu-
sioned and disappointed by their democratic institutions, personnel, and
outcomes.
Much of political science has referred to those historical trends as
dissatisfaction, protest, or even apathy. However, as I shall show, one
concept often comes to characterise this phenomenon in the words of citi-
zens themselves: frustration. Nevertheless, whilst such frustration is widely
acknowledged (e.g. Brooks, 1985; Kim, 2018; Sorensen, 1982) this book
suggests that those claims of frustration have not really be taken at face
value. To say it differently, the vocabulary of frustration is frequently
used in the literature, but often as though it was interchangeable with
dissatisfaction, or merely adding some sort of sulking attitude to it. Scien-
tifically, such an equivalent is simply not tenable. Indeed, in psychological
terms, “frustration” has a rather specific nature, which makes the strength
of an existing desire as central to it as an individual’s sense that it is
unfulfilled. The book proposes to correct this misconception and reinter-
pret contemporary democratic crises under the democratic adaptation of
the psychological concept of frustration. Indeed, crucially, reinterpreting
current democratic crises under the prism of frustration also has specific
potential consequences, notably in the forms of withdrawal, anger, and
aggression that can be usefully translated in political behaviour terms to
characterise key pathologies of democratic frustration in contemporary
societies.
This book thus theorises the concept of democratic frustration and
explains how it can be mapped compared to other frequently used
measures of democratic unhappiness such as apathy (or indifference),
cynicism, and criticality. It suggests that democratic frustration comprises
of three important dimensions: ideological, institutional, and political and
6 S. HARRISON
operationalises the concept and its dimensions based on an interaction

between democratic desire and perceived delivery deficit (the difference
between standards and perceived outcomes), along the (implicitly inter-
active) lines of the psychological definition of frustration as an unsatisfied
desire. The model I develop in this book assesses how widespread demo-
cratic frustration is compared to some alternative combinations of desire
and perceived delivery deficit, and how robust it is over time using both
multi-waves experiments and a panel study in real-life historical context.
The Psychological Concept of Frustration

Etymologically, frustration stems from the Latin frustra, which means “in
vain”. The psychology and psychiatry literatures offer several seminal defi-
nitions, which all articulate a similar mismatch between desire and reality.
The psychological concept of frustration is based on a “failure to satisfy a
motive” (Underwood, 1949). Conversely, Jeronimus and Laceulle (2017)
define frustration as “a key negative emotion that roots in disappointment
[…] and can be defined as irritable distress after a wish collided with
an unyielding reality”. A sense of frustration is reported when an indi-
vidual is prevented from attaining a certain objective or goal. Frustration
is thus sourced from a failure to satisfy a conscious or indeed (and more
often) subconscious desire. That centrality of desire is of critical impor-
tance because it suggests that an individual will not feel frustrated about
something that they do not care about—or to go a little further, that the
potential for frustration increases the more one cares (or indeed obsesses)
about something.
That role of desire as the cornerstone of frustration is emphasised by
Lacan (1994) who redefined the psychoanalytical concept of frustration
and its relationship to desire through three layers: symbolic, imaginary,
and real. Those layers or depths of frustration are further supported by
the findings of Chen and Vansteenkiste et al. (2015) which summarise
the relationship between need and frustration by explaining that a need is
either satisfied or frustrated. They also echo earlier research by Britt and
Janus (1940) who identified that “the frustrating situation is analysed in
terms of barrier or obstruction, and of interference with goal-attainment
and of reward expectation”. In all cases, the corresponding “level” of
satisfaction or frustration is thus directly related to the strength of the
need or desire, which sits at the heart of my operational model of
democratic frustration.
The satisfaction deficit is thus only one of the two components of

frustration alongside desire, so that frustration practically works as an
interaction between the two as follows:
Democratic frustration = Desire ∗ Perceived delivery deficit
that is:
[ ]
Democratic frustration = Desire ∗ Standard−Perceived Delivery
Beyond psychology, the link between desire and frustration has also
been noted in arts. For instance, Smuts (2008) in “the desire-frustration
theory of suspense” discusses how Hitchcock and Truffaut intuitively
went against traditional aesthetic models to create suspense. Unlike most
of their predecessors, they chose to “seed information” which generates
a desire on the part of the spectator which can then be more effectively
frustrated.
Research in criminology, organisational behaviour, and communi-
cation have also found frustration to be influenced by psychological
(Berkowitz, 1989; Blair, 2010; Crosby, 1976; Rosensweig, 1944), soci-
ological (Berkowitz, 1962; Fox & Spector, 1999), and socialisation
determinants (Crossman, Sullivan et al., 2009; Lockwood & Roll, 1980;
Perlman, Luna et al., 2014), in addition to specific stimuli (Kulik &
Brown, 1979; Maslow, 1941). There is an important subconscious
element to its expression (Yuan et al., 2015), which, crucially, is often
displaced away from its direct source, which, in turn, thus risks leading us
to endemic misdiagnosis.
Thus, according to the psychology literature, frustration must be
treated as a naturally endogenous and largely subconscious variable, with
psychological, social, experiential, and contextual sources, and multiple
emotional, attitudinal, and behavioural consequences. Conversely, the
model of democratic frustration developed throughout this book focuses
on those very democratic desires and aspirations that remain unful-
filled, as much as on the more traditional question of the perceptions
of delivery deficit itself. In that sense, the paradox of citizens’ democratic
frustration (as opposed to criticality or disengagement) will stem from
necessarily strong democratic desire and standards which will be unful-
filled as opposed to being compatible with a lack of appetite or interest.
Indeed, frustration requires a powerful desire, and its characterisation lies
at the heart of understanding the frustration itself and what solutions can
8 S. HARRISON
be proposed that would reconcile desire and perceived delivery gap if

such mitigation is conceivable at all given the nature, which we will soon
discuss of the relationship between the three inherent and endogenous
components of frustration: desire, standards, and perceived delivery.
As democratic frustration necessarily implies that people care and
desire democracy and that there is a mismatch between expectation and
perceived reality, it indeed assumes the simultaneous existence and varia-
tion of desire, standards, and perceived delivery rather than solely focusing
on the latter (as the vast majority of models of democratic dissatisfac-
tions do) whilst implicitly assuming the former two to be constant. Using
psychology insights, the democratic frustration model can then inform
the conceptualisation, causality, and pathologies of frustration and link
them to the realities observed by the political behaviour literature on such
elements as the crisis of participation and populism, so as to reassess the
nature, dimensions, causes, and consequences of democratic frustration.
Mapping Democratic Frustration vis-à-vis

Other Models of Democratic Crises
The crisis of democracies has of course been a key focus of attention in
the political behaviour literature. Authors have seen it as symptomatic
of the distrust (Bertsou, 2016) and cynicism of citizens towards polit-
ical systems, institutions, and social elites (Capella & Jamieson, 1996;
de Vreese, 2004; Kaase et al., 1996; Mishler & Rose, 1997; Newton,
2001; Seligman, 1997). A growing sense of dissatisfaction (Norris, 1999,
2011; Torcal & Montero, 2006) has accompanied a decline in turnout
(Franklin, 2004; LeDuc et al., 1996) and party and union memberships
(Katz & Mair, 1994; Pharr & Putnam, 2000; Scarrow, 1996) in parallel
to a resurgence of populist and extremist behaviour (Harrison & Bruter,
2011; van der Brug et al., 2000) and mass protest movements. A sense
of powerlessness, inefficacy (Kimberlee, 2002), and cynicism and alien-
ation (Buckingham, 2000) alongside a lack of interest (Dalton & Welzel,
2015) have been found as key factors to—or perhaps, more accurately,
rather key interpretations of—such crisis behaviour. The labels used and
phenomena described may sometimes be confusing referring to dissat-
isfaction, distrust, or even apathy all of which have different theoretical
implications. All, however, have something in common, a primary focus
on the “object” of the crisis (democratic systems, institutions, or elites)
rather than on the “subject” of it (what internal desire, appetite, or vision
is not really being satisfied), which makes them different from and largely
incompatible in angle and scope with a frustration approach.
The literature also shows that the democratic crisis may sometimes
particularly affect some categories of citizens. This is notably the case
of young people, who are often vocal in their criticism of how democ-
racy works, sometimes opting for non-electoral forms of participation
(Dalton, 2008; García-Albacete, 2014; Martin, 2012; Norris, 2011).
Young people in France also signalled a form of democratic frustration
during the Presidential Election in 2017. The top two ballot choices
for young people aged 18–29 were Mélenchon and Macron. “La France
Insoumise” (“France Unbent”) and “En Marche” (“Ahead!”) both of
which advocated “new ways” of doing politics with a promise to over-
haul existing power structures. That tendency was further confirmed in
2022. Conversely, there has been ample evidence that both econom-
ically deprived and ethnic minority populations have lower turnouts
than average (Franklin, 2004) and lower trust in democratic institutions
(Fennema & Tillie, 1999; Fieldhouse & Cutts, 2008). Conversely, unem-
ployment has been found to be a source of democratic marginalisation
(Jordahl, 2006; Laslier et al., 2003) across many political systems.
The idea of a democratic deficit—or democratic under-delivery—often
implicitly (and less frequently explicitly) underlines the importance of citi-
zens’ expectations in the literature. For instance, Norris (2011) points out
that the perceived delivery of electoral democracy often “lags behind”
citizens’ expectations. Similarly, Ferrin and Kriesi (2016) offer an impor-
tant contribution that deals with which substantive democratic values
or conceptions of democracy (such as aspects of liberal democracy vs
social democracy including the rule of law, freedom of the press, and
direct democratic participation) are being prioritised by nations and citi-
zens. This, in turn, leads them to assess what citizens from 29 European
countries favour (what they call “normative conceptions of democracy”)
and which of those they believe their democratic systems deliver. The
idea is that there are competing conceptions of democracy that different
citizens may favour and that which such conceptions they favour will
influence how they evaluate democracy. They use European Social Survey
data and are interested in differences across which countries have citizens
(dis)satisfied with democracy, as well as sociological differences in terms
of (dis)satisfaction notably in terms of socio-economic status. This model
of democratic satisfaction is based on substantive conceptions (or values)
of democracy and aims to explain why people hold different conceptions
10 S. HARRISON
of democracy (in the tradition of Dahl), notably liberal, social, and partic-
ipatory in Ferrin’s and Kriesi’s model. By contrast, the model I propose
within this book shows how democratic frustration will produce different
behavioural reactions depending on whether it is combined with specific
democratic desire or an absence thereof and is more in the tradition of
Eulau and Karps (1977).
This, however, remains fundamentally different from a frustration
model, and like the other approaches discussed above, “Object” (or insti-
tution) centric. This means notably that in the Ferrin and Kriesi model
as in the other ones being discussed, there is a central understanding that
democratic crises are, at most, a gap between what is expected and what
is delivered (the very notion of the “delivery deficit gap” in my model,
which this book depicts as only one of the two components of demo-
cratic frustration), and therefore that any such democratic dissatisfaction
is inherently fixable as long as the system moves closer to the citizens’
expectations. This is a notion, which frustration models cannot agree with
simply because part of the essence of frustration, as discussed earlier, is
its objective displacement as well as the path dependency between the
components of frustration that stems from the centrality of desire in the
notion.
Fundamentally, this book argues that democratic desire is entirely unre-
lated to normative conceptions of democracy. Instead, it expects that this
democratic desire will be grounded in functions which reflect insights
from theories of representation and of what people really want to “get”
out of democracy such as a sense of congruence, a sense of control, a
sense of acceptability, and a sense of resolution. Those fold into three
main dimensions: ideological, institutional, and political. For each of these
dimensions, I measure the “standard” (which is how well democracies
should really perform), the “perceived delivery” (how well democracies
perform in practice), and the desire (effectively how much people care,
how much it means to them). The operationalisation of frustration is then
the interaction (or product) of the desire with the perceived delivery gap
(i.e. the standard minus the perceived delivery).
The perceived delivery gap is thus only one of the two components of
the frustration (the other being the desire), and importantly, it mirrors
something which we know exists and is important from the psychology
literature. Frustration is a state and a pathology, and as citizens describe
themselves spontaneously as democratically frustrated, this book simply
assesses the extent to which some citizens indeed match the psycho-
logical definition of frustration and its operationalisation in their own
relationship to democracy. It can then also evaluate whether the difference
between those “democratically frustrated citizens” (in the psychological
sense of the term) and other dissatisfied (but not frustrated psycholog-
ically speaking) citizens explains the variations of behavioural reactions
that we observe in democracies in crisis in everyday life.
In short, most existing measures of democratic disengagement tend
to focus on the perception of the “delivery” and implicitly assume polit-
ical desire (and often democratic standards) to be constant or irrelevant.
By contrast, the concept of democratic frustration is understood as the
interaction between democratic desire which varies across individuals,
time, and countries, and the difference between democratic standards
and assessments of democratic delivery, both of which will be equally
subject to both individual-level and system-level variations as well as
temporal dynamics. Thus, both democratic desire and assessments of the
gap between the delivery of the democratic system and a citizen’s stan-
dards can vary together or independently. The interactive element means
that those with higher desire will care more about perceived delivery
deficit, to create a sense of democratic frustration. Consequently, there
can be no frustration without a delivery gap, but equally no frustration
without an inherent democratic desire, which will come to “weight” the
democratic delivery gap to create frustration.
Whilst neither democratic desire nor standards tend to be system-
atically present in existing research on crises of democracy, the two
elements do not have the same status here. As mentioned, a few existing
models acknowledge the implicit existence of unfulfilled democratic
desire, even though most don’t. Empirically, however, many models focus
on perceived democratic delivery or delivery deficit, without systematically
and explicitly measuring the specific standards that citizens hold when it
comes to democratic processes, personnel, and outcomes. Implicitly, those
standards are treated as though they were constant or irrelevant. When it
comes to democratic desire, however, it is typically ignored both analyt-
ically and empirically. Yet, from a psychological point of view, variations
in desire and standards are at the heart of frustration, which so many
citizens refer to when it comes to their democratic experience (Bruter &
Harrison, 2020). Furthermore, this depicts citizens as surprisingly passive,
unreactive, and dare we say uncritical within the context of democratic
systems supposed to be built around their needs and to provide them
12 S. HARRISON
with control. At face value, those references to frustration also tend to

differ in substance when it comes to the types of democratic functions
which they relate to. Let us now turn to those potential dimensions of
democratic frustration.
Dimensions of Democratic Frustration

To explore dimensions of frustration, we need to start from the diver-
sity of the relationship that each citizen may have with their democratic
system. Specific categories of individuals may be more susceptible to
(and differently affected by) frustration than others, and the taxonomy
of frustration relates those variations to emotive elements (Lazar et al.,
2006; Rosensweig, 1944; Shorkey & Crocker, 1981). At the same time,
however, beyond the question of “how much” there is the equally impor-
tant issue of “what”, that is, the diverse nature of the objects that
frustration may relate to. If such a thing as democratic frustration exists,
it thus becomes essential to consider what could be its dimensions, and
to do this, we consider the different ways in which citizens are known to
ascribe functions to democracy and elections.
There is an abundant body of democratic theory literature, which
informs us of the various potential functions of elections (Dahl, 2013;
Dennis, 1970; Katz, 1997; Mayo, 1960; Sartori, 1965) as well as the
bases through which citizens may derive a sense of democratic repre-
sentation (Eulau & Karps, 1977; Miller & Stokes, 1963; Przeworski
et al., 1999), legitimacy (Gibson & Caldeira, 1995), and accountability
(Berry & Howell, 2007). Whilst this literature uncovers multiple discrete
components of democracy and potential criteria to evaluate its quality, it is
possible to understand them as emphasising three important dimensions
that occur recurrently. The first is ideological congruence, which can give
citizens the impression that their substantive preferences are represented
by the system and the elites that are part of it (notably Eulau & Karps,
1977; Miller & Stokes, 1963; Rosema, 2004). The second dimension
pertains to the importance of institutional processes, transparency, and
effectiveness (for instance, Gibson & Caldeira, 1995; Przeworski et al.,
1999), which can give citizens a sense of well-functioning democratic
frameworks. Finally, a third dimension relates to the perceptions of polit-
ical trustworthiness (Bertsou, 2016) and integrity of democratic elites.
Based on those three components, we thus derive three possible dimen-
sions of democratic desire, standards, delivery, and ultimately frustration:
• Ideological—this dimension pertains to the perception of a

congruent offer to reflect a citizen’s substantive preferences and
provide him/her with a range of ideological options which he/she
perceives as fit for purpose.
• Institutional—this second dimension relates to the perceived exis-
tence of adequate processes capable of effectively and transparently
achieving democratic linkage, and providing efficacious, resilient,
accountable, and fair system structure.
• Political—the third and final dimension encapsulates questions
of agency, political personnel morality, and the integrity of their
behaviour, ethos, motivations, and democratic service including a
genuine will to put public interest at the heart of their action.
In sum, the ideological dimension relates to the democratic frustration

people might experience if they feel that the existing political parties do
not match their preferences. For example, in two-party systems if citizens
do not feel like the parties competing for their vote truly represent their
political interests, they may feel more frustrated than they would do if
they had a diverse choice of parties such as in multiparty systems.
Conversely, however, if citizens feel that each of the many parties
competing for their vote is mixing key ideological elements that they
agree and disagree with, then the ideological offer of the system may feel
confusing and frustrating. Whilst the dimension pertains to the demo-
cratic system as a whole, it is clear that political parties (or candidates
depending on the system) will likely play a central role in ideological
frustration. The institutional dimension stems from the democratic frus-
tration citizens may feel if they believe that the system has inadequate
democratic processes especially if the reality of decision-making, commu-
nication, and accountability mechanisms within the institutions does not
fully meet their standards of what a democratic system should deliver.
This time, and despite the dimension being once again conceived holisti-
cally, the crystallising focus of institutional frustration is likely to pertain
to constitutional and design elements rather than individuals or parties.
Finally, the political dimension corresponds to the democratic frustration
which may arise when citizens are suspicious of the behaviour and ethos
of politicians and political parties. When it comes to this dimension, the
integrity of their motivations and democratic service is often in question
and could arise in relation to questions of morality, honesty, or the purity
of their intentions. Indeed, with regard to the political dimension, it is
14 S. HARRISON
political leaders—individually or collectively—who are likely to be at the

heart of a sense of frustration.
It is worth noting that the description above implies that to an extent,
the three dimensions of frustration will thus also differ in their primary
object, parties for the ideological dimension, institutions for the insti-
tutional dimension, and people (the actual persons making up the elites)
for the political dimension, a distinction noted in various works on demo-
cratic dissatisfaction (see, for example, Bertsou, 2016, on the difference
between distrust in Parliament as an institutions and in actual parties).
Each of those components of democratic frustration is thus first a
source of potential democratic “value” for citizens and may thus form
a more or less important part of what I have labelled their “democratic
desire”. It is also secondly a potential basis of evaluation and perceived
shortfall of delivery. In other words, citizens will hold certain (and hetero-
geneous) standards regarding how well they would expect a democratic
system to minimally perform to be acceptable. There will conversely
be variation in their evaluation of the ability of their own democratic
system—institutions, parties, and elites—to deliver in practice. As such,
each of the two constitutive components of democratic frustration as
defined in the previous section will vary across individuals, systems, and
time within each of those three fundamental dimensions.
All in all, the nature of democratic frustration as we have defined it thus
has two important features summarised in Fig. 1.1. The first is that demo-
cratic frustration is not a directly measurable single item but rather a latent
reality which stems from a product between two different and equally
important measures: democratic desire (what citizens need and want to
get from their democracies) and a hypothetical democratic delivery deficit
(i.e. the shortfall between their democratic standards—their expectation
as to how a normally functioning democracy should fare—and their actual
assessment of the democratic delivery of the system they live within). The
second critical feature is that those components (democratic desire, stan-
dards, and delivery) and the frustration which they interact to combine
will be iterated along three different substantive dimensions: ideolog-
ical, institutional, and political. In the next section, we will map some
of the attitudinal and behavioural consequences which the thus defined
democratic frustration and its inherent components and dimensions may
have.
In the rest of this chapter, we will explore how to analytically model
this concept of democratic frustration in all of its complexity, its three
Fig. 1.1 The concept of democratic frustration
components, and its three dimensions. That is, we will unravel the analyt-
ical logic behind their determinants, their dynamics, and their attitudinal
and behavioural consequences.
Modelling Democratic Frustration

at the Individual Level: Socio-Demographic,
Psychological, Political, and Electoral
Psychology Determinants
Let us first consider the causes of democratic frustration at the indi-
vidual level. Bringing together insights from the various literatures on
democratic dissatisfaction, electoral psychology, and insights from the
psychology literature on causes and predispositions to frustration, we can
identify a few key potential determinants that should be accounted for in
our model. They are of different natures. First, we will consider several
social and demographic predictors. Second, we will identify key psycho-
logical and personality determinants. Third, we will turn to broad political
and behavioural factors. Finally, we will derive insights from the electoral
psychology literature to see which of the variables from that body of liter-
ature would likely constrain the emergence and evolution of democratic
frustration and its various components.
16 S. HARRISON
Social and Demographic Components

In terms of social and demographic determinants of democratic frustra-
tion as well as its individual components, three series of variables may
be of particular interest, either because of their weight in some models
of democratic dissatisfaction models or, more broadly, in some other
segments of the political behaviour literature such as those concerned with
participation and voting.
A first key variable is age, because of the general perception that
young people are among the most alienated from democratic processes
and the most excluded from some forms of participation. The case of
young people is specific enough that in this book, I have included a very
specific focus on first-time voters, whose frustration I expect to be partic-
ularly shaped by their initial civic and democratic experiences. There is
a broad literature on the democratic participation and dissatisfaction of
young people which justifies considering age (and indeed first electoral
experience) as potentially important predictor of democratic frustration.
However, the very nature of those models leads to paradoxical expec-
tations in terms of democratic frustration research. Indeed, whilst models
of dissatisfaction mention a potential lack of involvement from young
people, in a democratic frustration framework, this would likely lead to
a lower democratic desire and therefore lower likelihood of frustration
specifically whilst reinforcing the proportion of likely apathetic young
people (though Cammaerts et al., 2016 point out that apathy is by no
means a dominant feeling among unhappy European youth). At the same
time, the sheer lack of democratic experience may lead to lower levels
of democratic standards, which would limit the potential for a delivery
gap and therefore, once again, the potential for democratic frustration
among younger voters. This difference would be further exacerbated by
the asymmetry in the internal relationship between delivery and standards
which I consider in Chapter 2. As a result, age is a critical predictor of
democratic frustration, but whilst young people are known to participate
less, the very nature of the frustration concept would mean that they are
also less likely to express democratic frustration and that consistently with
psychological models, democratic frustration is more likely to “build up”
and worsen over time if it is not immediately addressed and alleviated.
A second key demographic determinant is gender. Whilst research on
the effects of gender on political behaviour is contrasted in its conclusions,
some models within gender and feminist political science at least expect
women to have different democratic and behavioural experiences than

men (see, for example, Córdova & Rangel, 2017; Stauffer & Fraga, 2022;
Studlar et al., 1998). As a result, I include it as an important predictor
in my models albeit with cautious expectations as to whether gender
will retain much effect once other social, political, and psychological
predictors are included directly into my models.
The third important social predictor to consider is socio-economic
status. Indeed, income, education, and occupation have been tradition-
ally noted to have important implications on several political behaviour
outcomes from participation to electoral choice and extremism (Almond
and Verba (1989 [1963]; Campbell et al., 1980; Converse, 1972; Ford &
Goodwin, 2010; Marsh & Kaase, 1979). Given the very nature of the
concept of democratic frustration and its core components, I do not
expect such effects to affect frustration as much as dissatisfaction, precisely
because it is likely to shape desire and standards as well as perceived
delivery so as to produce conflicting—and potentially self-cancelling—
effects. However, I include them as important control variables.
Finally, and similar ways, models of democratic frustration will also
consider other controls such as ethnicity known for its important
behavioural consequences in some of the countries in which I am
conducting this research (e.g. US, South Africa) and disabilities—notably
including hidden disabilities—which the electoral psychology literature
in particular highlights as having important effects on citizens’ electoral
experience and consequently attitudes (Bruter & Harrison, 2020).
Psychological Predictors
I have already mentioned that psychological studies of frustration take
into account developmental realities and the impact of age, suggesting
that frustration tends to worsen as well as move away from its original
object over the years, and that as a result, whilst many studies on demo-
cratic dissatisfaction suggest that young people are faring worse than most
on that front, I expect that, in complete contrast, they will also feel less—
rather than more—frustrated. However, that same psychological literature
also highlights the fact that some personality profiles are more susceptible
to frustration than others.
As a result, I consider the impact of personality on democratic frustra-
tion looking at two parallel models. When considering personality effects,
much of the political science literature focuses on the OCEAN model
18 S. HARRISON
(the so-called big 5) (see, for example, Briggs, 1992; McAdams, 1992;
Rosema, 2004 etc.), and here, I notably consider how conscientious-
ness and openness could shape democratic frustration. However, Bruter
and Harrison (2020) find that many political and electoral psychology
attitudes and behaviours are in fact much better explained by discrete
personality traits as opposed to the big 5 indices. In this case, I am partic-
ularly interested in the impact of creativity, sensitivity, abstraction, and
risk aversion, which importance these authors have highlighted in their
electoral models.
Similarly, Bruter and Harrison also suggest that next to fundamental
personality traits, moral hierarchisation is another source of psychological
differentiation across citizens with occasionally immense impact on their
political attitudes, experiences, and behaviours. I use their operationalisa-
tion based on hierarchisation of the moral commandments and popular 7
“deadly sins” and particularly consider the impact of focus on deprivation
and family as moral priorities.
Those key psychological predictors are thus part of my understanding
of how components of frustration will be determined and shaped, and
beyond them democratic frustration itself.
Political Predictors
A third series of important predictors to consider come from the tradi-
tional political behaviour literature itself and focuses on political, partisan,
and ideological characteristics.
Among those, we should first consider the potential importance of
partisanship, which, since Campbell et al. (1980) all the way to Iyengar
and Krupenkin (2018), has been seen as one of the most critical deter-
minants of all political behaviour, notably in some of the US-centric
literature. I include it as a control, but as noted in the next section, by
contrast, the electoral psychology literature suggests that partisanship has
been credited for a lot of variances that should instead be attributed to the
concept of (non-partisan) electoral identity (Bruter & Harrison, 2020).
Moreover, another important predictor to consider is ideology, which
is often perceived to work better than partisanship in multiparty systems
(e.g. Franklin, 1992). Consequently, I will include ideology rather than
partisanship as a control in most final models after testing for partisanship
and ensuring that ideology indeed works better.
A third important political predictor to consider is interest in poli-

tics. That variable has been found to be important in many behavioural
and network models, including Glenn and Grimes (1968), Furnham and
Cheng (2019), etc. Substantively, there is good reason to expect that
interest in politics could have a determining impact on citizens’ demo-
cratic standards and desire which makes it an important predictor in my
model.
Finally, an essential political predictor in many political behaviour
models is efficacy and notably external efficacy (the perception of one’s
ability to influence political outcomes). This is thus an important control
that I will consider in my models. However, it is important to note that
recent electoral psychology literature has also questioned the value of
traditional efficacy measures compared to projected efficacy (Bruter &
Harrison, 2020), which reinterprets the notion of efficacy under a projec-
tion and integration framework to suggest that rather than individual
impact, citizens will consider the potential effects of their behaviour as
part of the projected choices of “people like them”. As discussed, the
next section, this is another important predictor that I will consider and
given the risk of multicollinearity between efficacy and projected efficacy,
I will test both separately and consider only keeping the more effective of
the two variables in the final models.
Electoral Psychology Predictors

Finally, let us consider key determinants of democratic frustration and
which critical importance has been amply evidenced in recent electoral
psychology literature.
The first is the concept of electoral identity which is proposed by
Bruter and Harrison (2020) and uses a sports analogy to distinguish
between citizens who experience elections as “referees” and “support-
ers”. The underlying theory is that the partisan identity model (Campbell
et al. 1980) which has often been criticised by the literature ties the iden-
tity of voters to parties but that an alternative and in the authors’ view
more convincing alternative would be to say that whilst partisanship is
very rarely mentioned by citizens when exploring their own identities,
it does not mean that elections are “identity-less”. Instead, their model
suggests that citizens assume a role in electoral context which is either
that of referees (arbitrating between different competitors) or supporters
(backing one of them). They also show that this distinction is not simply
20 S. HARRISON
related to strength of partisanship but rather means that a vote is not the
simple expression of a preference, but instead the conclusion individuals
draw from embracing a certain role and function in how they experience,
consider, and adjudicate an election.
A second important criterion is that of societal projection, also intro-
duced in the same book. The basis of that model is that rather than being
“purely individual” or “purely collective”, elections are about the articu-
lation between the individual and societal layers of an election. In other
words, whilst individuals cast an individual vote, they will also estimate
how it fits within broader societal dynamics, not least by assessing how the
rest of the country (and/or specific people or groups they care about) will
behave in the same event. That assessment of how the rest of country is
behaving is termed societal projection and is shown to affect participation,
electoral choice, electoral experience, and the sense of democratic resolu-
tion that citizens may or may not derive from an election. In that sense,
I also expect societal projection to similarly affect individuals’ democratic
desire and likelihood to feel democratically frustrated.
A specific derivative of societal projection is projected efficacy. As
discussed in the previous section, it is the extent to which citizens believe
not quite that their individual vote will make a difference, but rather that
if “they and people like them” (whomever these may include) behave in a
certain way, then this will affect the outcome of the election. Bruter and
Harrison (2020) find that the effect of projected efficacy is coherent with
but almost systematically stronger than that of traditional external efficacy
in all the behavioural and attitudinal models that they test. As a result,
I also expect projected efficacy to be a critical predictor of democratic
frustration and its component. As alluded earlier, the correlation between
efficacy and projected efficacy is such that I will test for both independent
variables in the model but likely only keep the more effective one to avoid
multicollinearity issues.
Those three variables will thus play a key role in my models of
democratic frustration and its component alongside socio-demographic,
psychological, and political predictors which I briefly discussed above.
Modelling Systemic Level Determinants

of Democratic Frustration
Having considered the individual-level determinants of democratic frus-
tration, let us now assess some of the key comparative and systemic level
attributes that may be susceptible to constrain and influence it as well.
Given that one of the components of democratic frustration is the
perception of democratic delivery, it is only natural to consider that
the objective democratic delivery it is based upon will have an impact
on democratic frustration itself. In other words, whether a democratic
system delivers “better” or “worse” to citizens should be a key ingredient
within the democratic frustration recipe (notwithstanding the complex
link with other components which we will explore later in this chapter
when considering the cycle of frustration).
In turn, political science has long studied how various institutional
arrangements, elite behaviour, and contextual realities affect the quality
of democracy. Therefore, several key institutional and contextual vari-
ables need to be accounted for in my model. I have approached this
by including a “broad spectrum” of institutional and contextual vari-
ables that may affect citizens’ experience of democracy and be used as
systemic level independent variables but also controls. In terms of case
selection, there is a variety of electoral systems (majoritarian, propor-
tional, and mixed electoral systems), territorial organisation (federal for
the US, and Australia, and devolution in the UK), and differing levels
of democratic consolidation (South Africa is a developing democracy).
These systems also feature various measures of electoral administration
including compulsory voting (e.g. in Australia), advance voting (Australia,
US), and postal or mail-in ballots (Australia, UK, US). The four key
case studies include presidential (US) and parliamentary (UK, South
Africa) systems. These countries also encompass a wide range of socio-
economic contexts, demographic characteristics including overall wealth
and inequality, education levels, presence of minorities, and political ones
including government stability, left or right wing majority, single party or
coalition government, and key adversarial issues such as the Brexit refer-
endum highlighting generational discrepancies in preferences, corruption
scandals in South Africa, or heightened ideological polarisation in the US.
Whilst not included as a variable per se in the model, it is important to
recognise that context will impact real life actual delivery (and thus also
who is in power and how they act) and will obviously influence perceived
delivery.
22 S. HARRISON
We now move onto the next section that models the potential
behavioural consequences of democratic frustration.
Withdrawal, Anger, and Aggression---A Model

of the Behavioural Consequences
of Democratic Frustration
Democratic frustration is likely to have both attitudinal and behavioural
consequences. Traditionally, in political science, we tend to start with
attitudes before analysing behaviours, because there is a clear hierarchy
between them (and identities and beliefs). In this case, however, it is
worth remembering that psychologists have approached frustration from
the observation and understanding of certain behaviours which were
perceived as disruptive by those who suffered them, before “working
backwards” to understand the underlying attitudes and structures that
may lead to them. That clinical and therapeutic approach, however
unusual in political science, perhaps needs to be observed here if we want
to do justice to the promise of taking the concept of frustration seriously
and of understanding whether democratic frustration meets the criteria of
a traditional form of frustration in psychological terms.
It is in fact with those behavioural consequences that we shall start,
because of the way that we have just described in which in psychology, the
concept of frustration first emerged as a conceptual framework for clinical
practitioners to explain a set of behaviour that they were observing among
many patients and which they understood to be difficult to deal with in
their lives. In other words, in psychological terms, as often, the obser-
vation of pathologies preceded the characterisation of their underlying
cause. Those behavioural consequences are mostly triple: withdrawal,
anger, and aggression.
The dimensionality of democratic frustration is interesting in its own
right, but in modelling terms, it also comes with potentially complex and
intense implications. Earlier in this chapter, we have related democratic
frustration to the crisis of democracy in its multiplicity of patholog-
ical symptoms. Could different dimensions of democratic frustration also
be responsible for the different (indeed, sometimes almost contradic-
tory) attitudinal and behavioural consequences which have been observed
across consolidated and emerging democracies, and which are often so
conveniently—but perhaps not always convincingly—regrouped under

the general concept of “democratic crisis”?
To approach this question, I rely once again on the insights of psychol-
ogists when it comes to understanding the consequences of frustration
in general, to apply them to the unique case of democratic frustra-
tion. Among the most relevant findings in the field, Berkowitz (1989)
and Bandura (1973) conclude that frustration is indirectly facilitative
of emotional responses such as aggression. Sargent (1948) describes a
sequence of behaviour that features emotion as the central dynamic factor
of three key behavioural consequences: withdrawal, anger, and aggres-
sion. Conversely, Wetzer et al. (2007) found that although frustration and
anger were related conceptually, they differed in that frustration focuses
on the negative outcome, whereas anger centres on blaming others. Anger
is thus similar to the extra punitive response behaviour (Rosensweig,
1944) and provides support for findings that intolerance of frustration
is associated with anger (Martin & Dahlen, 2004). Dollard et al. (1939)
connect the frustration of a desire as the source of aggression, leading to
the “frustration-aggression hypothesis” developed by Berkowitz (1969).
In turn, this also echoes earlier work by Britt and Janus (1940), who
considered that the frustration process includes “aspects of emotion,
tension, conflict, inhibition, aggression and withdrawal”, and that “reac-
tions to frustration may be aggression, withdrawal, regression, resistance,
anger, guilt and remorse, shame, and embarrassment”.
The parallel between those expected psychological consequences of
frustration and the symptoms of democratic pathologies that we have
noted and discussed earlier in this chapter is rather striking. De-
participation (abstention, membership decline) offers an obvious parallel
to the psychological concept of withdrawal. By contrast, populist and
extremist voting can easily be matched with the symptoms of what
psychologists describe as anger. Finally, in similar ways, engaging in
violent protests or Revolutions largely overlaps with psychological criteria
for the notion of aggression. Thus, thinking of current pathologies of
systemic crisis as symptoms of democratic frustration can explain physical
violence but also protest and scapegoating.
This analysis is even more relevant that the withdrawal-anger-
aggression model also relates to another fundamental characteristic of
frustration which we briefly evoked earlier in this chapter, that of displace-
ment. Indeed, when the source of the frustration is not clear to the
subject, the violence (regardless of its forms and expressions) is typically
24 S. HARRISON
displaced on an innocent target, especially if the subject feels ignored or

humiliated.
From a psychological point of view, we thus witness three types of
behavioural consequences which likely stem from fundamentally different
emotional responses, and from a systemic point of view, they embody
distinct challenges and threats to the foundations and functioning of
social and political systems. Those consequences also happen to be almost
worryingly intuitive in their democratic equivalents, and as we have just
seen, they happen to match the descriptions of many of the most common
symptoms that scholars have attached to the crisis (or crises) of democ-
racy across countries and systems from abstention to populism and from
non-violent and violent protests all the way to very radical behaviours
such as support for Revolutions and the choice to leave one’s country.
Indeed, when thought of in terms of democratic applications, each of the
three behavioural consequences of withdrawal, anger, and aggression can
be matched with a few both mild and radical behavioural symptoms. At
the same time, each of them can also relate to several separate attitudinal
consequences which may work as mediators and/or facilitators to those
pathological behavioural outcomes.
From Hopelessness to Hostility:

Mapping the Potential Attitudinal
Consequences of Democratic Frustration
Whilst behavioural consequences of frustration are most relevant to
psychologists, in the context of understanding democratic frustration as a
political behaviour phenomenon, we are also crucially interested in atti-
tudinal implications. In this book, I tie democratic frustration and its
three components to four key concepts in the recent literatures in polit-
ical science and electoral psychology: perceptions of electoral atmosphere,
distrust, non-compliance, hopelessness, and electoral hostility.
Bruter and Harrison (2020) move from the concept of “context” in
elections to that of perceived “electoral atmosphere”. They argue that
rather than context shaping elections directly in a top-down institution-
alist way, citizens subconsciously capture a vast range of contextual and
institutional signals which they merge into the perception of an electoral
atmosphere which they amply comment on, and which, at least in recent
years, has typically been described in very negative ways. In my model,
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man, for Bere Regis Church, is now in the Dorchester Museum; but,
unfortunately, the Piddletown clock was not preserved, though it was
in good going order when it was removed to make room for the
present one.
In 1820, and probably for long before, it was the custom of the
members of the choir to write their own music; some was actually
composed by them, while some was borrowed from other villages,
although the rivalry which often existed between village choirs not
infrequently prevented the exchange of tunes. In two vellum-covered
volumes, the property of Mr. W. Gover, of Piddletown, dated 1823,
the music and words of the Psalms are most beautifully written. The
books were given by a certain Mrs. Price to the choir. The larger
book belonged to J. Holland, a clarionet player; the smaller to W.
Besant. In the latter may be found music headed, “John Besant’s
Magnificat,” which was probably composed by one of his ancestors.
At this time the choir consisted of two clarionets, two bass viols, a
flute, and a bassoon; while before this a “serpent” was used, and the
music is written apparently for all these instruments. The violin was
prohibited by most clergymen as being “Devil’s music,” on account of
its being played in public-houses and for dancing. The instruments
were given up about 1845 on the introduction of a barrel-organ. At
this time the village also possessed a band, which had been in
existence for nearly two hundred years, and of which the inhabitants
were justly proud.
Piddletown is perhaps better known as the “Weatherbury” of
Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. On the south-west of
the church is the gargoyle (the head of some beast, with the legs of
a child projecting from its mouth), which destroyed Sergeant Troy’s
work at Fanny’s grave. The old malthouse mentioned in the same
book stood in what are now the gardens of Ilsington House, while
Bathsheba’s house stood on the site of Ilsington Lodge, although it is
sketched from the house at Waterson. The latter is a fine old building
about two miles from Piddletown, and was the residence of the
Martyns before they went to Athelhampton, and remained their
property for long after. It was much damaged by fire in 1863, but was
carefully restored by the owner, Lord Ilchester, to whose family it still
belongs. It is interesting to note that a certain Mr. Bainger, who lived
at Ilsington Lodge, was the moving spirit in causing the lowering of
Yellowham Hill, between Piddletown and Dorchester, about 1830.
The Vicarage possesses a very fine staircase and an oak-beamed
study, while an old farmhouse, now used as a cottage, in “Style
Lane,” formerly contained a fine carved mantelpiece. In the
churchyard is the headstone of Peter Standley, King of the Gipsies,
with the following inscription:—
In memory of Peter Standley, who died 23rd November, 1802,
aged 70 years.
Farewell my dear & faithful wife

My sons & daughters too
Tho’ never in this mortal life
Again you must me view
Close in our Saviour’s footsteps tread
Of Love divine possessed
And when you’re numbered with the dead
Your souls will be at rest.
He is said to have died of smallpox in Style Lane, and to have

been buried by night. Gipsies still visit the grave.
The old coaching road from London to Dorchester runs to the west
of the village, and “Judge’s Bridge,” near Ilsington Lodge, is said to
have taken its name from being the meeting-place of the judge and
the “javelin men” on the occasion of the Dorchester Assizes.
The Court Leet House, wherein was transacted all the local
business, and which was also used as a school, formerly stood in
the “Square”; the stocks, the old village pound, and pump were near.
The house now occupied by Mr. W. Gover was the residence of the
Boswells, who owned land in the parish, and introduced the system
of irrigating the meadows.
Athelhampton Hall is a fine old building east of Piddletown. There
is a tradition that it took its name from some of the Saxon Kings, and
was originally called Athelhamstan; but Hutchins thinks it more
probable that it derived its name from Æthelhelm, one of the Saxon
Earls in Dorset, who was killed in an engagement with the Danes
a.d. 837.
The first owners of Athelhampton of whom there is any record
were the de Loundres and Pideles. From them it came by marriage
to the Martyns, who held it till 1595. At the death of Nicholas Martyn
it was divided between his four daughters, who married respectively
Henry Brune, Henry Tichborne, Thomas White, and Anthony Floyer.
Gradually the shares of the Whites and Tichbornes came into the
hands of the Brunes, and were sold by them in 1665 to Sir Robert
Long. It then came by marriage to the Hon. William Wellesley Pole
(afterwards Earl of Mornington), whose son sold it in 1848 to Mr.
George James Wood, from whom it came to his nephew, Mr. G.
Wood Homer. It is now the property of Mr. A. C. de Lafontaine, who
purchased it in 1890. The Floyer share of the house remained in
their possession till an exchange was effected by Mr. Wood, when
the whole came into his hands.
The house itself consists of two sides of a quadrangle facing south
and west, and was in a very bad state when bought by Mr. Wood,
having, it is said, been used as a farmhouse, and the fine old oak-
roofed stone-floored hall as a cattle-shed. Mr. Wood entirely
renovated the oak roof, taking great trouble to preserve the original
style. He re-floored the large drawing-room, and made various other
extensive repairs. He removed the gatehouse, which darkened the
house, and partly re-erected it in the form of a summer-house. This
has, however, been again removed by the present owner, who has
made many alterations. The house is built of Ham Hill stone. The
east wing is said to be the oldest part of the present building, and
was probably erected by Sir William Martyn, who died in 1503; while
the north wing is thought to have been built by Nicholas Martyn later
in the sixteenth century.
Athelhampton Hall.
A small chapel stood on the lawn when Mr. Wood bought the
property, but as this and Burlestone Church were both out of repair,
he pulled them down and built the present church, to a great extent
at his own cost. The chancel of old Burlestone Church is still
standing in its overgrown churchyard, the tombs having all fallen into
decay. No churchyard belonged to the Athelhampton Chapel,
Piddletown having always been the burying-place of the owners.
In a field about a quarter of a mile from Athelhampton, on the land
of Mr. G. Wood Homer, are the grass-grown mounds—the remains
of the hamlet of Bardolfeston, the seat of Drogo de Bardolf, from
whom it came hereditarily to the Martyns. It consisted of a manor,
hamlet, and church; the latter stood at a little distance from the
cottages and manor on what is now known as Church Knap or Knoll.
The field in which the hamlet stood is now known as “Dunditch,” and
there is a local couplet which runs:
Dunditch was a thriving town
When London was a vuzzy down.
It is probable that Bardolfeston extended irregularly to Piddletown,
as it is known that cottages and a mill existed between the two, and
Bardolfeston was part of the Piddle Hundred, being sometimes
called Piddle Bardolf.
WOLFETON HOUSE
By Albert Bankes
HE present Wolfeton House, in the parish of
Charminster, in the county of Dorset, is known to have
been built by John, father of Sir Thomas Trenchard,
during the reign of Henry VII.; but as the property was
acquired by the Trenchard family (through marriage)
from the Jurdains, and previously the Jurdains had obtained the
house and land (also through marriage) from the Mohun family, it is
quite clear that a house of some description must have existed on
the same site as that of the present residence.
Some archæologists consider that the gatehouse is decidedly of
the Norman period; so, should that be the case, probably the house
inhabited by the Jurdains, before them by the Mohuns, was built
soon after Norman Conquest.
A date is still to be seen on the north side of the north tower, but
whether that refers to the actual building of the towers, or only to
some portion that had been rebuilt or restored, is not known.
Wolfeton House.
In a note attached to the pedigree of Trenchard it is stated that the

first Sir Thomas Trenchard rebuilt the house at Wolfeton as it now
stands, except some addition made by Sir George Trenchard; and
there seems no reason to doubt this statement, for a study of the
existing house shows very clearly two distinct dates of building.
There are evidences, also, that Sir Thomas Trenchard’s rebuilding
incorporated many portions of a still older edifice.
Mr. Hamilton Rogers, in his Sepulchral Effigies of Devon, says:
Their last heiress, Christian, daughter and heir of John
de Mohun by Joan his wife, daughter of John Jurdain, of
Wolveton, Charminster, married Henry Trenchard (obit
1477), of Hordull, Hants, and subsequently of Wolveton.
His descendant, Sir Thomas Trenchard (ob. 1505), rebuilt this fine
old mansion, and carved on escutcheons over the gateway; and first
among the noble series of genealogical shields in the hall windows
were the arms of Trenchard. Traces of the great Devonshire family of
the Mohuns are not infrequently found in Dorset.
The elevation of the south front of Wolfeton House remains very
much as originally erected, and is of two distinct styles of
architecture—the portion of the building to the east being in the
Tudor-Gothic, probably of the time of Henry VII., and the west portion
in the Elizabethan, or, more probably, Jacobean style. The latter
portion is a picturesque example of this pseudo-classical style of
architecture and nothing more. The older part of the building,
however, possesses features which are worthy of notice, as the rich
labels over the windows are composed of hollow mouldings filled
with rolls of sculptured fruit and foliage, and terminating in quaint
corbels carved with great spirit.
Hutchins says:
The ancient seat of the Trenchards here is a noble
building, and at the time when it was built perhaps the
best in the country; it is a large fabric, its principal fronts to
the east and south. On the north it is sheltered by a grove
of trees.
One enters on the east into what formerly was a small
court, and on both sides of the gate is a round tower. In
this front are many windows, almost all of them different
from each other, as if the architect had studied irregularity.
This seems to have been the humour of that age, for
Dugdale remarks that:
At Tixall, co. Stafford, the seat of the Lord Aston, there
is a fine piece of masonry, built in the reign of Henry VIII.:
though the windows are numerous, scarce two of them
are alike, and there is the same variety of fretwork of the
chimneys; so that the beauty of the structure in that age
did not, as in the present, consist in uniformity, but in the
greatest variety the artist could give.
On the north side of Wolfeton House there was a small
cloister leading to what was the chapel, in which some of
the family were married (within memory), but it has since
been pulled down. To the west of the chapel there was a
little court.
From Powel’s Topographical Collections in Devon and Dorset (a.d.
1820) we learn that a great deal of the back of the house had been
destroyed, and the whole of the fine glass (with the exception of five
or six shields) was taken down, amounting to 100 lbs., and sent to
Mr. Trenchard’s other house at Lytchett; but it was so badly packed
that when the case was opened almost the whole of the glass was
pounded or broken to pieces, so that very little was preserved.
The only remaining portion of the eastern front is the old gateway,
the most distinctive feature of the house. The entrance gate is
flanked by large circular towers capped by conical stone roofs. That
on the south side is somewhat larger than its fellow, as well as
standing a little further eastwards. The arch of the entrance gateway
has continuous mouldings east and west, with a label over. The
eastern label contains a shield bearing the following arms:—
Quarterly, 1 and 4, Trenchard; 2, Mohun; 3, Jurdain; and an
inescutcheon, Quarterly 1 and 4, 3 lozenges; 2..., 3.... The western
label terminates in figures holding shields on which are two T’s
combined with T. E. united by a tasselled cord. Above the apex of the
arch similar initials appear interlaced, and over all T. T. combined.
Over the door within the gateway are three escutcheons on stone:
(1) An angel holding a T[transcriber; fractur script], and at the points
T. E. (2) The arms of Trenchard. A little to the south of the gateway is
a building, on which is this inscription: “Hoc opus constructum fuit
An’ Dni.—MCCCCCXXVIII.” The tower, together with the series of
rooms connecting the gatehouse westwards to the main house, are
comparatively modern, as also is the entrance porch. These
buildings form the present north front of the house, and over the
porch are sculptured the arms of Weston.
The chapel mentioned by Hutchins as having formerly stood on
the north side of the house has long since vanished, but traces of its
foundations were discovered during some excavations made about
fifty years ago.
Turning to the inside of the house, we find much to interest both
the antiquary and the architect.
Before the hall was destroyed and replaced by the present dining-
room, over the large chimney-piece there were carved
representations of fourteen Kings of England, which, says Hutchins,
“are said to resemble the figures in the first edition of Rastell’s
History of England, ending with Charles I.” Aubrey, in his
Miscellanies, states that on November 3rd, 1640 (the day on which
the Long Parliament began to sit), the sceptre fell from the figure of
Charles I. while the family and a large company were at dinner—an
ill omen, the full import of which could not have been realised at the
time. Opposite to these sculptured monarchs were the figures of an
abbot, a soldier, and some esquires. On the screen were the arms
and quarterings of the Trenchard family.
From the hall a large stone staircase led to the dining-room, a
noble apartment, adorned, says Hutchins, “with a noble bay window,
in which stood an octagon marble table on four wooden lions.”
The interior of the western portion of the house—i.e., of the part
built by Sir George Trenchard, is composed of two storeys, of which
the lower seems originally to have constituted a single apartment.
Both storeys were very richly decorated; the flat ceiling of the first
storey is covered with an arabesque of plaster, embracing foliage
and various devices, finishing with large central pendants.
The upper floor had a lofty vaulted ceiling, corresponding with the
high pitch of the roof of a similar character. Unfortunately, this ceiling
has been utterly destroyed—a dreadful piece of vandalism, as the
tracery of the pendants and ceiling must have equalled, or even
surpassed, that of the lower rooms. This upper apartment now forms
a series of bedrooms, in the centre of which is the original sculptured
stone chimney-piece, having under the cornice a large panel,
whereon is depicted a figure reclining on a couch surrounded by
dancers.
The magnificent carved oak doorway and chimney-piece in the
east drawing-room were sent to Sir Thomas Trenchard by Philip and
Joanna at the same time that they presented him with their portraits
and a china bowl. The following description of the chimney-pieces in
the east and west drawing-rooms is given by the county historian:—
Chimney-piece No. 1, in the east drawing-room, the
height of the room, consists of an arrangement of
entablatures one within the other, the upper and outer
cornice being supported by lofty Corinthian pillars with rich
capitals; immediately beneath this are two large sunken
panels, respectively containing figures of Hope and
Justice, separated by male caryatides, which by their
different costumes are intended perhaps to typify a citizen,
knight, and esquire.
Within the innermost cornice, and immediately
surrounding the fireplace, is a series of panels of great
interest, displaying rural and hunting scenes, trades,
satyrs, heads, etc., quaintly but faithfully carved.
Chimney-piece No. 2, in the west drawing-room, is
similar in its general character; the principal subject
amongst its decorations represents the contest of the
goddesses in the garden of the Hesperides.
One of the most beautiful examples of carving is an inner door-
case in the east drawing-room, the arch over which has a richly
moulded soffit, and carved heads in the spandrils; over the door, rich
Corinthian pillars, flanked by sculptured figures of a king in armour
and a queen, support a cornice surmounting a large sunken panel.
In the front of the cornice is a shield bearing the following arms:
Quarterly—1 and 4, Trenchard; 2, Mohun; 3, Semée of cross-
crosslets, a lion rampant, Jurdain.
The East Drawing-Room, Wolfeton House.
There is, of course, much else to interest the antiquary in the way
of old furniture and objects of art, and any visitor will be “charmed
with the admirable manner in which the art of the modern furniture
has been adapted to the character of the old house, lending its aid to
heighten rather than to detract from the beauty of the antique
carvings and of the interior.”
A curious legend in connection with the dining-room is that of the
ghost of Lady Trenchard having made its appearance immediately
before her death. Anyone, of course, can believe as much or as little
as he likes about the ghost part of the story, but of the fact of the
lady’s suicide there is no doubt. During the ownership of Sir Thomas
Trenchard one of the Judges of Assize came to Wolfeton House to
dine; but no sooner had the company sat down than his lordship,
greatly to the surprise of everyone, ordered his carriage and abruptly
left the house. On their way back to Dorchester he told his marshal
that he had seen standing behind Lady Trenchard’s chair a figure of
her ladyship with her throat cut and her head under her arm. Before
the carriage reached the town a messenger overtook it on horseback
with the news that Lady Trenchard had just committed suicide.
As to the dining-room as it now stands, it may be mentioned that
Wolfeton, like many other old houses of the same period, suffered
greatly at the hands of those who in the last century were wont to
pull down one-half of their houses to repair the other half. This
appears to have happened to Wolfeton House, as, judging from an
old engraving of the house, the dining-hall must have been quite
twice, or more than twice, the size of the present room.
Of the historical anecdotes connected with Wolfeton House, the
visit of the King and Queen of Castile is, perhaps, of the greatest
interest.
In the early part of the sixteenth century, Philip, Archduke of
Austria and King of Castile, set forth with a great armada, with the
intention of surprising the King of Aragon, but he had scarcely left
the coast of Flanders when, encountering a violent storm, he was
compelled to put into Weymouth in distress. King Philip and his
Queen were invited to Wolfeton House by Sir Thomas Trenchard,
then High Sheriff, and were hospitably entertained. And with this visit
the origin of the Duke of Bedford’s family is curiously mixed up; for
on the arrival of the King and Queen, Sir Thomas Trenchard, being
unacquainted with the Spanish language, found a difficulty in
conversing with his guests. In his dilemma he had recourse to his
cousin, John Russell, of Kingston Russell, who, being a good
linguist, became a favourite with the King, and was recommended by
him to Henry VII., who appointed him to an office in the royal
household. In the succeeding reign Russell was also popular, and
the confiscation of Church property during this period rendered it
possible for Henry VIII. to bestow upon him extensive lands. And
thus was founded the great Bedford family.
In acknowledgment of his hospitality Sir Thomas Trenchard was
presented by the King and Queen of Castile with some very valuable
china vases, together with their portraits, all of which are now at
Bloxworth House, near Wareham. They also presented to him the
carved chimney-piece and doorway still standing in the drawing-
room at Wolfeton House, as before described.
Engraved copies of the oil-paintings of the King and Queen of
Castile hang on the left-hand side of the staircase, alongside of
which is a Spanish engraving of the poor Queen Joan, when sorrow
at the death of her husband had sent her mad. On their way to the
Royal Mausoleum the funeral cortège had to pass a night at a
nunnery. In the middle of the night the poor mad Queen suddenly
asked where they were. “In a nunnery,” was the reply. “I will not have
my husband surrounded by all these women,” exclaimed the Queen;
so the cortège immediately removed, and spent the remainder of the
night, until daylight, in the open country.
In the ancient gatehouse of Wolfeton the winding staircase of
forty-one oaken steps appears to be quite unique: there are nine
stone steps at the base, twenty-four of oak to the first floor level, and
seventeen leading to the garret above. For years (some think one
hundred) this staircase must have been a complete ruin, as is easily
seen by the decayed state of those steps opposite to the two
windows, the wind and the rain having beaten in on them for many
years.
In addition to the King and Queen of Castile, other royal visitors
have from time to time honoured Wolfeton House with their
presence, and during the residence of George III. at Weymouth the
King and Queen paid it frequent visits. On one occasion, when
George III. admired a marble table that used to stand in the drawing-
room, the Trenchard of that day immediately presented it to His
Majesty, and the table is now in the royal dairy at Frogmore,
Windsor.
No account of Wolfeton House would be complete without some
allusion to the story of the Roman Catholic priest. In the time of
Queen Elizabeth, when it was the object of the then Government to
stamp out in every way the Papal influence in England, the Weld
family had a Roman Catholic priest concealed at their house at
Chideock, in Dorset. Sir Thomas Trenchard, who then resided at
Wolfeton House, and was a personal friend of Mr. Weld, of Chideock,
happened to be High Sheriff of the county of Dorset for that year,
and received orders to go over and search for the priest therein
concealed. On account of his friendship with Mr. Weld, Sir Thomas,
on reaching Chideock, made a most cursory search, and left with the
intention of reporting to the authorities that he could find no signs of
the priest; but, unfortunately, as he was leaving, the villagers, whose
sympathies were Roman, not aware of his benign intentions, began
hooting and calling the High Sheriff and his constables a pack of
blind owls for not being able to find the concealed priest. “If that’s
what you want,” exclaimed Sir Thomas, losing his temper, “I’ll soon
show you I am not so blind as you think!” and, surrounding the
mansion with his constables, a real search was made, and the poor
priest was soon discovered and brought over to Wolfeton House as
a prisoner. The priest, a highly-educated French gentleman, made
himself so agreeable that Sir Thomas Trenchard did all in his power,
by writing to the authorities, to save his life; but the Government of
that day was so desirous of making an example, that all entreaties
were in vain—the poor priest was executed, and, it is said, was also
drawn and quartered in the High Street of Dorchester.
THE LITERARY ASSOCIATIONS OF
DORSET
By Miss M. Jourdain
ORSET has continued Dorset alone from time
immemorial,” and its special character has been more
carefully preserved and fixed than that of any other
English county in the work of two Dorset poets, William
Barnes and Thomas Hardy, one of whom has
succeeded, like Mistral in France, in making its native language a
literary medium known beyond its spoken limits.
Dorset’s earlier poets,[61] however, have not been “local”; and it is

characteristic of Matthew Prior that, in the account drawn up by
himself for Jacobs’ Lives of the Poets, he describes his father as a
“citizen of London,” and that though the first entry against his name
on his admission as pensioner at St. John’s College, Cambridge, is
Dorcestr, it has been altered by a later hand into Middlesexiensis. In
spite of conflicting entries, it is now generally admitted that Prior,
perennis et fragrans—the motto upon the modern brass to his
memory in Wimborne Minster[62]—was born at or near Wimborne, in
East Dorset, the son of George Prior, who is said to have been a
joiner.
“With regard to the family of Prior, the tradition of Wimborne says
that his father was a carpenter, and one house he lived in is pointed
out: it is close to the present Post Office, and is called the house in
which the poet was born. The other was pulled down, but its site is
known.”[63]
Local tradition makes Prior a pupil at the free Grammar School;
and of the unusually large library of chained books in the old church,
one was said to be a standing testimony to his carelessness—a
chained folio copy of Ralegh’s History of the World, in which a hole is
said to have been burned by the boy when dozing over the book by
the light of a smuggled taper. Unfortunately for the floating tradition,
it has been stated that this particular defacement is the work, not of a
candle, but of a red-hot poker. Still more unfortunately, it has been
proved that the History, with other books, was placed in the
library[64] at a much later date than Prior’s boyhood.[65]
Almost a century later a poetic “Court” was held at Eastbury, in
North Dorset, by George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, who is
not interesting as a poet[66] himself, but as the cause of poetry in
others, the last of the patrons, a curious, gorgeous, tawdry figure, fit
to be seen through the coloured glass of Macaulay’s ridicule. He was
the easy mark for dedications and compliments from many of the
best-known writers of the day—poets utterly discrowned, and those
on whose brows the laurel grows very thin and brittle; Edward
Young, Thomson, and Fielding mention him; while his Great House
at Eastbury is celebrated by Thomson, Young, and Christopher
Pitt,[67] who writes, somewhat oddly, of this “new Eden in the Wild.”
The pleasures of this “Eden” appear, from an epistle of Pitt, to have
been smoking and drinking, with conversational intervals. Dr. Young
(of the Night Thoughts) sits with “his Dodington,”
Charm’d with his flowing Burgundy and wit,

By turns relieving with the circling draught
Each pause of chat and interval of thought;
Or, through the well-glazed tube, from business freed,
Draw the rich spirit of the Indian weed.
Thomson’s “Eastbury”—
Seat serene and plain

Where simple Nature reigns,
is as bad, in its way, as Pitt’s “Eden”—serenity, plainness, and simple

nature being the most unlikely characteristics of Dodington,[68]
whose heavy figure was arrayed in gorgeous brocades; and whose
equally magnificent State bed was “garded and re-garded” with gold
and silver embroideries showing by the remains of pocket-holes,
button-holes and loops that they came from old coats and breeches.
This great house, after Dodington’s death, was taken down all but
one wing and sold piecemeal by Earl Temple, his heir.
Henry Fielding, one of the Eastbury circle—he dedicated to
Dodington an epistle on “True Greatness”—was brought up as a boy
in the manor-house at East Stower,[69] where he was taught by the
Reverend Mr. Oliver, curate of the neighbouring village of Motcombe,
said to have been the original of Trulliber, a portrait drawn “in
resentment of some punishment inflicted on him,” according to
Hutchins.[70] Fielding was fortunate in another portrait, for it is
generally admitted that the prototype of Parson Abraham Adams
was William Young, Incumbent of West Stower, who had many of
Adams’ eccentricities. As an instance of Young’s absence of mind, it
is said that when chaplain to a regiment in Flanders he “wandered in
a reverie into the enemy’s camp, and was only aroused from his
error by his arrest. The commanding officer, perceiving the good
man’s simplicity, allowed him to return to his friends.”
At East Stower, too, Fielding lived for a time with his first wife.
William Crowe, though like Fielding only a short time resident in
Dorset, is admitted on the strength of his topographical poem,
Lewesdon Hill, of which Rogers thought so much that when travelling
in Italy he made two authors his constant study for versification,
Milton and Crowe.[71] Crowe’s Lewesdon Hill is a perfect example of
an eighteenth century didactic and descriptive poem, with all the
heaviness due to the requirements of an age which, like Horace
Walpole, called for “edification” in its art. As in Goldsmith’s Traveller
the person who speaks the verses sits pensively on an Alpine height,
so Crowe in his poem is supposed to be walking on the top of the hill
on a May morning—a hill, it has been suggested, that Fuller[72] may
have climbed before him, and where the wide prospect, “standing
where Moses stood when the Lord showed him all the land,” may
have prompted the title of his book, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine,
which he wrote when at Broadwindsor. Upon this hill, where
The lonely thorn

Bends from the rude south-east with top cut sheer,
Crowe surveys the outspread map of the county—Shipton Hill,

Burton Cliff, Eggardon Hill, the rich Marshwood Vale—in winter
Cold, vapourish, miry, wet,
to the “rampire” of Pillesdon, even the “nameless rivulet” (the
minutest trickle of a stream at the foot of Lewesdon Hill), which, he
rejoices,
Yet flows along

Untainted with the commerce of the world.
William Lisle Bowles, author of faint and forgotten verses, is

remembered by Coleridge’s early admiration for his sonnets. His
father, the Rev. W. Bowles (rector of Uphill), planted and improved
Barton Hill House, in Dorset, which the poet sold. On leaving it the
poet wrote verses full of regret for
These woods, that whispering wave

My father rear’d and nurst.
An author unknown outside his county is John Fitzgerald Pennie

(buried July 17th, 1848). He was born at East Lulworth, March 25th,
1782, and is known as a dramatic writer. He published Scenes in
Palestine, or Dramatic Sketches from the Bible, 1825; Ethelwolf, a
tragedy, 1821, etc. He followed in his early years the profession of
an actor, but after a chequered and unsuccessful career, settled in
his native village and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He
published his autobiography in 1827, The Tale of a Modern Genius,
or the Miseries of Parnassus. In 1810 he married Cordelia Elizabeth,
daughter of Jerome Whitfield, a London attorney. He and his wife
died within a few days of each other, and were buried in the same
grave.
Wordsworth’s connection with Dorset is of short duration, but is of
interest as occurring at a critical period in his career. On his receiving
Raisley Calvert’s legacy, he was able to live with his sister Dorothy at
a farmhouse at Racedown,[73] which he was allowed to occupy rent
free on condition that the owner might spend a few weeks there from
time to time. It was in the autumn of 1795 that he settled there. His
house is set upon the north-west slope of the “rampire” Pillesdon, in
a hollow among hills cultivated to their summits, or patched with
gorse and broom, which open here and there to allow glimpses of
the sea. The Dorset peasants in Wordsworth’s time were wretchedly
poor, their shapeless cottages “not at all beyond what might be
expected in savage life,” as Dorothy Wordsworth wrote. Very little
trace of the peculiar quality of the place is to be found in
Wordsworth’s poems, but it was here he wrote the first of his poems
of country life, modelled with an experience so personal as to keep
every sentence vividly accurate.
It was here that he watched[74] the “unquiet widowhood” of

Margaret, drawing out the hemp which she had wound round her
waist like a belt, and spinning, as she walked backwards before her
cottage door. Here, no doubt, he saw her ruined cottage—there are
many crumbling shells and ruined cottages in the district to-day—
with the red stains and tufts of wool in the corner-stone of the porch
where the sheep were permitted to come and “couch unheeded.”
The garden, run wild, too, is to be met with to-day:
Its matted weeds

Marked with the steps of those, whom, as they passed,
The gooseberry trees that shot in long, lank slips,
Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems
In scanty strings, had tempted to o’erleap
The broken wall. I looked around, and there,
Where two tall hedge-rows of thick alder-boughs
Joined in a cold damp nook, espied a well,
Shrouded with willow-flowers and plumy fern.
Here, too, was Goody Blake’s cabin:—

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1 Anatomy of Democratic Frustration 1

How Can We Explain the Determinants, Dynamics,

Perceptions of Democratic Frustration in Self and Others 86

6 Emergence of Democratic Frustration: The Case

Democratic Frustration and the Atmosphere of Elections 205

Fig. 1.1 The concept of democratic frustration 15

Table 2.1 Conceptual model of democratic frustration:

Table 6.2 Descriptives of democratic frustration: first-time voters

Anatomy of Democratic Frustration

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

unfulfilling democratic systems also consequently entails an equally funda-

Paradoxes of Democratic Crises

in Germany and Spain, parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland—

operationalises the concept and its dimensions based on an interaction

The Psychological Concept of Frustration

The satisfaction deficit is thus only one of the two components of

Democratic frustration = Desire ∗ Perceived delivery deficit

be proposed that would reconcile desire and perceived delivery gap if

Mapping Democratic Frustration vis-à-vis

with control. At face value, those references to frustration also tend to

Dimensions of Democratic Frustration

• Ideological—this dimension pertains to the perception of a

In sum, the ideological dimension relates to the democratic frustration

political leaders—individually or collectively—who are likely to be at the

Fig. 1.1 The concept of democratic frustration

Modelling Democratic Frustration

Social and Demographic Components

women to have different democratic and behavioural experiences than

A third important political predictor to consider is interest in poli-

Electoral Psychology Predictors

Modelling Systemic Level Determinants

Withdrawal, Anger, and Aggression---A Model

conveniently—but perhaps not always convincingly—regrouped under

displaced on an innocent target, especially if the subject feels ignored or

From Hopelessness to Hostility:

Farewell my dear & faithful wife

He is said to have died of smallpox in Style Lane, and to have

In a note attached to the pedigree of Trenchard it is stated that the

Dorset’s earlier poets,[61] however, have not been “local”; and it is

Charm’d with his flowing Burgundy and wit,

Seat serene and plain

is as bad, in its way, as Pitt’s “Eden”—serenity, plainness, and simple

The lonely thorn

Crowe surveys the outspread map of the county—Shipton Hill,

Yet flows along