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Fiddling while Democracy Burns: Partisan Reactions to Weak Democracy in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2021

Matthew M. Singer Open the ORCID record for Matthew M. Singer [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Democracy is weakened when citizens and elites do not criticize actions or actors that undermine its principles. Yet this study documents a widespread pattern of partisan rationalization in how elites and the public evaluate democratic performance in Latin America. Survey data show that those whose party controls the presidency consistently express positive evaluations of the current state of democratic competition and institutions even when democracy in their country is weak. This pattern emerges in both mass survey data and among elected elites. These data have a worrying implication: if only the political opposition is willing to publicly acknowledge and sound the alarm when democracy is under attack, public pressure to protect democracy is likely to be dramatically reduced.

Type
Special Section: Las Américas
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 1: Special Section: Las Américas , March 2023 , pp. 9 - 26
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the author precedes the References section.

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VZL6O4

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