What creates a space for antidemocratic elements to gain control over democratic institutions? To what extent does public opinion contribute to the emergence of antidemocratic movements by creating an atmosphere that is conducive to the rise of antiparty politicians with a tenuous commitment to democracy? By addressing these questions, the proposed research seeks to advance existing knowledge vis-a-vis the relationship between public opinion and the stability of democratic regimes. The research challenges one of the major consensuses in the study of democracy and democratization: the centrality of political elites in the breakdown of democracy. It attempts to do so by exploring links between the two levels of analysis: the macro-level of the regime and the micro-level of attitudes and behavior.
Specifically, it examines how democratic performance shapes mass attitudes concerning democracy and democratic institutions, or political parties in particular, and how these affect the stability of democratic regimes via elections. The proposed research would contribute to existing knowledge of what sustains democracy and, consequently, its stability that affects people.s daily lives, at the same time as it attends to important theoretical concerns. The proposed research project tests three competing hypotheses with respect to why citizens lose confidence in political parties and turn to antiparty politicians. It focuses on the constituent elements of trust in political parties, and introduces an original concept, the linkage-type hypothesis, to explain why some citizens in some countries lose faith in parties while others do not. In order to test these competing hypotheses concerning the constituent elements of trust in political parties, the project works with two units of analysis, individuals and countries. It also combines multiple methods of analysis. NSF funding is requested to commission original surveys of 55-58 questions with a sample size of 600 in the major metropolitan areas of Caracas, Venezuela and Lima-Callao, Peru. The larger project, which draws from other current and pending support, will include a similar survey of metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina. Quantitative analyses of the surveys will be combined with findings from focus group interviews, ethnographic research, and comparative historical analysis. Focus group interviews and ethnographic research have been, and will be, used to pretest the survey questions developed by the Co-PI. Comparative historical analysis will allow the Co-PI to engage in the comparison of the national contexts in which individuals are, or were, placed. This, in turn, is expected to assist the interpretation of survey responses and the exploration of links between regime performance and stability, on the one hand, and mass attitudes and behavior, on the other. The proposed research project will have substantial intellectual merit. It is expected to yield a number of journal articles, culminating in a dissertation and a book that employ original data to answer a question of great contemporary significance concerning the stability of democratic regimes: why do Latin American citizens support antiparty politicians with a tenuous commitment to democracy? The primary data gathered in this project will be made available to others upon request, following the publication of the book. Although the proposed research focuses its attention on the rise of antiparty politicians in Latin America, its findings can be applied to other regions and cases around the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, where such politicians are also ascendant. Because the proposed study deals with the sources of instability that could develop into violent conflict as it did in Venezuela, it also has implications for both the prevention of violent conflict and the reconstruction of stable democratic regimes in post-conflict societies.
Besides advancing knowledge and understanding, the proposed research also is expected to have broader impacts on society. It will broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in society by hiring women and minorities to administer surveys in Peru and Venezuela and to decode the data at the University of Notre Dame in a later stage of the project. Finally, the study findings will be integrated into a course that the Co-PI is required to teach about Andean politics and political economy, following her return from the fieldwork at the University of Notre Dame, in accordance with an agreement with the Kellogg Institute Fulbright Educational Partnerships Program.
