Political Culture and Democracy in Latin America: Perspectives on Brazil and Colombia (original) (raw)
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Contextual and Micro-Social Sources of Democratic Norms in Latin America
Midwest Conference of Latin American Studies, Dallas, …, 2009
Many Latin American countries democratized between 1975 and 2000, and research has confirmed that contemporary Latin Americans hold democratic political attitudes. Using AmericasBarometer surveys of 18 countries from 2008, we examine the commitment of Latin Americans to three democratic attitudes – preference for democracy over other forms of government, support for general participation rights, and tolerance for participation by system critics. We also explore the impact of personal resources, crime and corruption, evaluation of system performance, social capital, and the sociopolitical context on democratic attitudes. A preference for democracy and support for citizens’ participation rights are strong, but tolerance is lower than the other attitudes. Evidence is found for acculturation – that Latin Americans acquire democratic attitudes by living in democratic regimes and through education.
Can Latin American Political Culture Help Save Democracy?
LASA Forum, 2023
Using survey data from the AmericasBarometer this article examines key components of the political culture of Latin American citizens and assesses the extent to which democratic political culture has taken hold in the region. The framework for the analysis of political culture can be useful for other regions of the world. Full document: https://forum.lasaweb.org/
Elections and the Muddled Present of the Latin American Democracies
Latin American Research Review, 2019
, permanently dwell in the quagmire of intense social violence and utter disregard of the rule of law. Farther south, Peru's political turmoil has brought down a president, jailed the main opposition leader, and rocked the judiciary. Bright spots are few and far apart: Ecuador's post-Correa democratic change, of course; Colombia's complex and conflictive postconflict still holds promise, in spite of strong resistance, of extricating the country from the longest civilian conflict in the Western Hemisphere; and Uruguay's democratic stability stands out amid the turbulence in neighboring Argentina and Brazil. However, even democratic stalwarts such as Chile and Costa Rica experience unexpected problems stemming from the erosion of their party systems. Yes, we still have elections. This is the longest period in Latin American history in which governments are elected by reasonably free and fair elections. And, yes, heeding the advice made by the books under review, we should not conflate the countries' political problems into one big bundle labeled "Latin American democratic crisis." Yet it is safe to say that the optimistic promise of the Third Wave of democracy for Latin America has faded, and, after a long transition from authoritarianism, most countries in the region remain stuck in the status of hybrid regime, semi-democracy, or low-quality democracy. 2 Some are now authoritarian systems, and the few traditional democracies are not going through the best of times. Latin American has learned to combine competitive electoral democracy, with flawed rule of law institutions, a bent for authoritarianism from powerful executives encroaching on other branches of the state, and protracted social violence, which curtails the exercise of rights and liberties by the citizenry. Against this problematic backdrop, a crop of new books on Latin American politics demonstrates both the promise and the shortcomings of comparative studies in the region. Four of them rely on sophisticated survey analysis for studying citizen behavior in the region as a whole, for a subset of countries, or for one case (Brazil), over a decade. A fifth shares an emphasis on electoral democracy with the previous works but has a definitely less ambitious and more descriptive scope. Two other books use mixed methods that combine in-depth country cases and statistics to test wide-ranging theoretical claims. Finally, I review a book that takes on populism in Venezuela from another discipline and in so doing, provides a valuable discussion on the historical roots of identity politics. Looming large in this set of books is the ambitious Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts, edited by Ryan E. Carlin, Mathew M. Singer, and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, an exquisitely conceived collective effort by a distinguished group of Latin Americanists. It sheds light on whether, after decades of experience with democracy, citizens in this region resemble their counterparts in advanced democracies when voting in elections. Apart from the impressive array of scholars involved in the project, what makes this book stand apart from the rest is its systematic approach. With one exception (Herbert Kitschelt and Melina Altamirano's piece on clientelism), the authors share a substantive theoretical inquiry: does American political theories on voter behavior travel well to Latin America? Most of them share a methodological design-several essays use a same Left-Right (L-R) variable construction 3and, most importantly, they have a shared source of information: the AmericasBarometer from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) at Vanderbilt University. More than a collection of essays, this is an academic collective project. Authors use sophisticated statistical models such as multilevel regression models and analysis of change in probabilities to test drivers of electoral choice: sociodemographic (age, gender, race, class); political attitudes; retrospective evaluation of societal performance (economy); or the effect from the exposure to crime and corruption. While one may have objections about the loose operationalization of certain conceptsfor example, social class and cleavage, which sometimes end up conflated with any meaningful social 2 Classification of the countries may vary depending on the framework one uses. For an in-depth analysis of Central American countries, see
Journal of Politics in Latin America
2002
Many Latin American countries democratized between 1975 and 2000, and research has confirmed that contemporary Latin Americans hold democratic political attitudes. Using AmericasBarometer surveys of 18 countries from 2008, we examine the commitment of Latin Americans to three democratic attitudes -preference for democracy over other forms of government, support for general participation rights, and tolerance for participation by system critics. We also explore the impact of personal resources, crime and corruption, evaluation of system performance, social capital, and the sociopolitical context on democratic attitudes. A preference for democracy and support for citizens' participation rights are strong, but tolerance is lower than the other attitudes. Evidence is found for acculturation -that Latin Americans acquire democratic attitudes by living in democratic regimes and through education.
Political discontent in new democracies: the case of Brazil and Latin America
Review of Sociology, 2011
Political changes related to globalization apparently produce similar effects on old and new democracies. All over the world, comparative research on democratization has showed that political distrust is a common variable affecting the whole of the State and the relationship between citizens and democracy. Nevertheless, political discontent in old democracies has stimulated citizens to adopt new attitudes and modes of political participation, while in newly democratized countries citizens tend to withdraw from politics as a consequence of institutional distrust. In fact, in many new democracies, although adhering to the normative meaning of the democratic regime, distrust of democratic institutions is associated to citizens' negative feeling about political efficacy, low levels of political interest and political participation, and also preference for democratic models which exclude political parties and/or parliaments. This paper evaluates the meanings and consequences of the contemporary phenomenon of political discontent in Brazil and Latin America and discusses its implications for democratic theory.
Latin American Politics and Society, 2018
Democracy is the default means of organizing government in Latin America, and since the beginning of the twenty-first century, though especially during the commodity boom of 2003-2011, the region saw considerable poverty and inequality reduction. Joe Foweraker, in his introduction to this excellent volume, identifies the above as on the good side of the balance sheet. Prominent on the other side are the concentration of power in the executive branch and the persistence or increase in corruption and citizen insecurity. Each defect, for Foweraker, represents a concern for democracy's core: accountability (in his introduction and chapter 2). The book explores this by examining how "much" democracy, what "kind" of democracy, and how the formation of the state impacts current democratic performance in Latin America. Never far in the background is the Guillermo O'Donnell corpus, particularly his work in the 1990s (e.g., Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization, 1999), on delegative democracy, horizontal accountability, and brown spots. Indeed, Democracy and Its Discontents in Latin America echoes O'Donnell's mission to make sense of the puzzle of democracy's uneven success. The most explicit response to O'Donnell's work comes from Foweraker's chapter 2, which focuses on accountability, because it corresponds to the "lived experiences" of citizens (15). David Doyle follows this with a long-term perspective on the relationship between institutions, state capacity, and rule of law (chap. 3). He focuses on state capacity-such as between the citizen and policy effectiveness (34)-in an institutional analysis that highlights how institutions lengthen time horizons and produce more efficiency, fewer incentives for predation, and more credibility. But Latin American institutions often miss the mark. Will Barndt's analysis of political parties offers an innovative and severe explanation (chap. 12). Barndt disentangles the resources available to political parties (core capacity and abilities to recruit, self-finance, produce, and divulge publicity and to network, 205) and considers these in relation to changing demands in contemporary electoral politics. Demands outstrip inherent capacity, which leads to a structural transformation toward "corporation-based parties," parties that cohere to corporations and favor large, organized special interests to resolve resource shortcomings (such as running expensive campaigns). Political parties may enhance governability, and indeed, when Mexico's PRI signed a pact with its rivals (PAN and PRD), it improved governability, a persistent problem in that country since its democratization in the late 1990s. Yet Roderic Ai Camp (chap. 13) finds that as governability increased, public support for democracy
Are politically engaged citizens more democratic? A glimpse from Brazil
A significant part of the Western literature on democracy assumes that political participation leads to citizens being more committed to democratic values. However, we do not know to what extent this is true in young democracies with an authoritarian tradition. Hence, this article aims to examine whether politically engaged Brazilians are more democratic. To do so, we analyzed whether there is any association between political participation, support for democracy, and democracy relativization through multivariate regression models. Our database comprises a representative sample of 2417 interviews with the electorate of São Paulo in 2019. The results show a statistically significant association between unconventional political participation and support for democracy. General political participation is associated with non-relativization of democracy only, showing a limited relationship between support for democracy and participation. Other variables, such as political interest, political knowledge, and interpersonal trust, are also associated with higher support for democracy.
Democracy Deficit in Emerging Countries: Undemocratic trends in Latin America and the role of Brazil, 2013
2510. “Democracy Deficit in Emerging Countries: Undemocratic trends in Latin America and the role of Brazil” Hartford, 3 September 2013, 34 p. Paper for the Conference “Promoting Democracy: What Role for the Emerging Powers?”, organized by the Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), the International Development Research Centre (IRDC), and the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, 15-16 October 2013). 1. Introduction: ancient and modern concepts of democracy, structures and mores 2. Democracy in Brazil: from the authoritarian regime to democratization 3. Latin America and the many faces of the Left: new clothes, old habits 4. Democracy Deficit in Emerging Countries and the role of Brazil 5. Under-democratic Brazil: the building up of new kind of authoritarianism 6. The erosion of democracy in South America-with a little help from Brazil 7. Conclusion: promotion of democracy abroad depends on domestic changes Abstract: After an introductory discussion of the various meanings of democracy and its institutionalization in historical cases, the paper focuses on the case of Brazil in the regional context. After experiencing vigorous democratic dynamics, following the transition from military regime in mid-80s, Brazil seems to have witnessed a reversal of the previous democratic trend. Since the inauguration of Lula's administration, in the early 2000s, the new elite of the Workers' Party (PT) has aligned the government with the so-called Bolivarian countries in Latin America. In politics, the PT has revealed itself to be tolerant of the habits of the old oligarchies (clientelism, patrimonialism, corruption); economically, it has stimulated the old practices of colbertism, dirigism, and displayed a preference for state-driven initiatives and controls (instead of autonomous agencies). Some analysts even raise the specter of corporate fascism, which is more evident in Bolivarian Venezuela; others suggest that a new unholy alliance is uniting Lula's Brazil with its old and new best friends in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and even Argentina (not forgetting some of their undemocratic cousins in other continents). Lula's foreign policy confirmed a clear departure from Brazil's traditional defense of human rights and democratic values, as reconstructed after the long undemocratic military interregnum by statesmen such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The PT's South-South activism and infantile "anti-imperialism", moreover, is directly at odds with, and opposed to, the more prudent orientation of professional diplomacy. Not only does it not reinforce democracy inside Brazil, but it also shows no determination to promote democracy abroad (a fact clearly revealed by votes on the UN Human Rights Commission, for instance). The weak democratic credentials of the new Gramscian nomenklatura currently in power in Brazil offer scant prospects for a vigorous promotion of democracy in most of South America.