Support for Polyarchy in the Americas
Ryan E. Carlin
Department of Political Science
Georgia State University
38 Peachtree Center Ave., Ste. 1005
Atlanta, GA 30303-2514
Phone: (404) 413-6190 Fax: (404) 413-6156
[email protected]
Matthew M. Singer
Department of Political Science
University of Connecticut
341 Mansfield Road, U-1024
Storrs, CT. 06269-1024
Phone: (860) 486-2440 Fax:(860) 486-3347
[email protected]
Keywords: Support for Democracy, Polyarchy, Modernization theory, Political Culture,
Presidential Approval, Latin America
Forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies Volume 44 (Nov 2011)
Acknowledgements: This research was funded by the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s
(LAPOP) Small Grants Program for Research and Publishing. The authors kindly thank Damarys
Canache, Julio Carrión, François Gélineau, Jonathan Hartlyn, José Álvaro Moisés, Karen
Remmer, Rodolfo Sarsfield, Mitch Seligson, Lee Walker, and the anonymous reviewers for
constructive critiques on earlier drafts. All remaining errors are our own.
Abstract: This study measures support for the basic rights, liberties, and practices associated
with polyarchy in 12 Latin American democracies. Specifically, it identifies five profiles of
support for polyarchy’s core values and norms – public contestation, inclusive participation,
limits on executive authority, and institutional checks and balances. Although citizens who fit the
polyarch profile accept all of polyarchy’s principles, those who fit one of the four mixed support
profiles (power constrainer, power checker, power delegator, power restrainer) only accept
some of them while rejecting other core democratic principles. Long-run factors emphasized by
modernization and cultural theories (e.g. education, wealth, political engagement) are closely
associated with the polyarch support profile. However, short-range performance factors (e.g.
economic perceptions; crime, discrimination, and corruption victimization; voting for losing
presidential candidates; presidential approval) may better explain why citizens fit one particular
mixed profile over another and particularly explain willingness to delegate authority to the
executive at the expense of other institutions.
Democracy in Latin America has reached a turning point: its success or failure appears to
rest more firmly in the hands of its own citizens, institutions, and elected leaders than military
commanders (Pérez-Liñán 2007, McCoy 2006). 1 Despite this monumental feat, democracy’s fate
in the region remains uncertain, as recent evidence of a “rollback” of (Diamond 2008) or
“pushback” against (Puddington 2007) basic democratic rights and liberties attests. Such
backsliding begs the question—does liberal democracy enjoy widespread popular support in
Latin America? If not, why? Answering these questions will help fully appreciate the roles
everyday citizens and their beliefs play in the region’s democratization.
Guided by these questions, this study develops a theoretically-grounded measure of
support for polyarchy, or the rule by many (Dahl 1971). The analysis is based on an emerging
consensus that democratic support is a multidimensional concept and that ideal-type democrats
coexist with citizens holding mixed or ambivalent belief systems. It finds five shared profiles of
support for polyarchy across twelve Latin American democracies. And while some citizens fully
support polyarchy’s ideals, most display one of four profiles that only partially embrace them.
To determine what distinguishes polyarchs, citizens with an unblemished profile of
support for polyarchy, from citizens who reject one or more of polyarchy’s core tenets, the study
tests competing hypotheses from modernization theory, political psychology, ideology, and
short-term regime performance. Polyarchs are more educated, wealthier, more cognitively
engaged with politics, and less ideological than their less democratic counterparts. They also
tend to hold lower evaluations of the president. Factors that lead voters to reject polyarchy’s
principles ion contrast tend to be much more heterogeneous and multidimensional. Relatively
stable long-run factors like education and political interest are the dominant predictors of
attitudes toward protecting civil liberties and allowing inclusive participation for all groups in
1
society. Short run factors, in contrast, are more important in leading citizens to reject democratic
institutions or support delegative democracy.
The current investigation makes three main contributions to the study of democratization.
First, it probes beyond the ideal-typical polyarch profile to identify four heterogeneous profiles,
i.e. diminished sub-types of polyarchy support. Second, rather than assuming mixed belief
profiles represent non-attitudes, it examines what differentiates citizens with these profiles from
polyarchs empirically. Indeed, presidential approval, economic rationality, and ideology explain
mixed profiles as well as or better than political sophistication. Mixed support profiles, thus,
have more structure than previously thought. Moreover, this analysis suggests that rejection of
specific democratic principles can be linked to different short-term political considerations. In
contrast to much of the work on developed countries, but similar to work on Africa (Moehler
2009), voters who support the incumbent and are pleased with economic outcomes under the
current regime are more willing to delegate authority to the executive at the expense of checks
and balances and perhaps even civil liberties. Third, this study produces measures well-tailored
to testing the complex and contingent connections between mass orientations to polyarchy and
polyarchy as a regime outcome. Identifying the range of democratic belief systems, establishing
their sources, and tying them to political behavior are crucial to theory development (Booth and
Seligson 2009, Coppedge N.d, Norris 1999). In this sense, polyarchy support profiles are a sound
basis of “descriptive inference” upon which to build solid “causal inferences” (King, Keohane
and Verba 1994) about the relationship between democracy at the regime and mass levels.
Measuring Support for Democracy
Though democracy is an “essentially contested concept” (Gallie 1956), a procedural
minimum definition, based on Dahl’s (1971) conception of polyarchy, is gaining acceptance:
2
“fully contested elections with full suffrage and the absence of massive fraud, combined with
effective guarantees of civil liberties, including freedom of speech, assembly, and association”
(Collier and Levitsky 1997, 434). Absent one or more of these criteria, democracies can be
qualified “with adjectives” describing how they deviate from the procedural minimum (Collier
and Levitsky 1997) Like democracy measures themselves, valid measures of support for
democracy must flow from a clear a priori conceptualization of democracy. Yet most extant
measures of democratic support do not and, therefore, face two pitfalls. 2
First, many survey measures directly inquire about support for “democracy” and, thus,
force respondents to answer from their own conception of “democracy.” Since citizens’
conceptions vary wildly, and may be vacuous or pejorative (Miller, Hesli and Reisinger 1997,
Ottemoeller 1998, Camp 2001, Moreno 2001, Seligson 2001, Bratton et al. 2005, Baviskar and
Malone 2004, Carrión 2008), comparisons and inferences based on such measures lack validity.
Moreover, many citizens express support for “democracy” in abstract terms but reject concrete
democratic freedoms, values, and norms (Prothro and Grigg 1960, McClosky 1964, UNDP
2004). Second, in addressing these issues, analysts must consider the possibility that support for
democracy, a multidimensional concept, 3 might not converge on a single linear dimension.
While “democrats,” who fully support all conceptualized dimensions of democracy, occupy one
end of the continuum, and “non-democrats,” who reject all of democracy’s dimensions, occupy
the other end of the continuum, who occupies the middle? Consider a citizen who embraces
elections, waffles on government threatening the press, moderately favors banning extremist
parties, but champions free association. For this hypothetical citizen, the underlying dimensions
of support are not linear but bundled categorically. Scoring this citizen in the middle of a linear
single-dimension democracy scale—less democratic than “democrats” and more democratic than
3
“non-democrats”— obscures a great deal of potentially theoretically relevant information.
Thus an optimal measure of support for democracy would have several features. It would
begin with a concise conceptualization of democracy, and employ multiple indicators of support
for the dimensions of that conceptualization rather than asking point-blank about “democracy.”
Lastly, it would not restrict democratic values to a single continuum but rather explore the
systematic mixtures of orientations to democracy’s dimensions that may exist in the polity.
Measuring Support for Polyarchy
With these standards in mind, this study gauges support for a particular kind of
democracy, polyarchy. Dahl’s democratic ideal is “the continuing responsiveness of the
government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals” (1971, 1). It requires
affording citizens “unimpaired opportunities” to formulate their preferences, signal them to each
other and to government individually and collectively, and to have their preferences taken into
equal consideration by the government (Dahl 1971, 2). To ensure these opportunities, Dahl posits
eight institutional guarantees—freedom of association, freedom of expression, right to vote,
expansive eligibility for public office, access to alternative information, free and fair elections,
and the dependence of government policy on citizens’ expressed preferences (1971, 3)—that
“might be fruitfully interpreted as constituting two somewhat different theoretical dimensions”
(4): public contestation and inclusive participation. Contestation means political competition
takes place in an atmosphere of free speech, organization, and participation. Inclusiveness
implies competition is, above all, open. Free and fair elections enhance both meaningful
participation and the effectiveness of contestation. While these two dimensions do not
necessarily covary, each makes the other more effective. Dahl terms a regime approximating this
ideal-type polyarchy instead of democracy to create a new typology to “serve as a basis for
4
estimating the degree to which various systems approach this theoretical limit” (1971, 2).
Dahl also theorizes that progress towards the exigent standard of responsive government
requires vigilance over the basic procedures and institutions that grant citizens effective
participation and control of the agenda. Recent research suggests a lack of checks on executive
power is democracy’s greatest threat (Kapstein and Converse 2008, Diamond 2008). While the
blame for unchecked executives surely falls on weak political and regulatory institutions and on
civil society, as least part of it could reflect mass values. In Latin America support for populist
(Seligson 2007) and delegative governance (Walker 2009) is widespread, even among citizens
purporting to prefer “democracy” (UNDP 2004, Carrión 2008). Executives who place “national”
priorities ahead of citizens’ rights or who emasculate (or close) the legislature and/or judiciary
nullify effective participation and compromise citizen control of the agenda. Citizens who accept
or are ambivalent to such political maneuvers augur against the democratic ideal of government
responsiveness conceived as “full procedural democracy with respect to an agenda and in
relation to its demos” (Dahl 1997, 44-45). Not surprisingly, Dahl included measures of
horizontal accountability via checks and balances in his measures of polyarchy (1971, 239-40).
Defining democracy as polyarchy allows this study to consider a citizen ideal-type
polyarch. A polyarch fully supports the political and civil freedoms, norms, and procedures that
bolster the twin dimension of public contestation and inclusive participation. Ideal-type
polyarchs also reject executive machinations to subvert, pervert, or reverse them or to otherwise
undermine government responsiveness. They value polyarchy’s principles in theory and in
practice. Yet just as many regimes have institutional shortfalls that deviate from polyarchy’s
standards without being fully authoritarian, many citizens’ belief systems will likewise deviate
from full support for polyarchy’s principles. How shall we characterize such citizens?
5
Taking an approach akin to Collier and Levitsky’s (1997) “democracies with adjectives,”
Schedler and Sarsfield identify “democrats with adjectives” based on orientations to multiple
dimensions of liberal democracy. Using national surveys in Mexico from 2003 (ibid 2007) and
2005 (ibid 2009), they find a liberal democratic belief system alongside five “diminished subtypes” rejecting at least one—but not all—of these principles. The proportions of citizens that fit
these profiles are remarkably stable across the two studies: e.g. liberal democrats comprise just
13.6% of the sample in both analyses. Their results are fairly consistent with Dryzek and
Holmes’s (2002) findings on democratic discourse—a concept that overlaps with democratic
support—in 13 post-Communist societies. Only a handful of the discourses are either clearly
liberal (3) or clearly authoritarian (3) while multiple (8) discourses espouse a mixture of
democratic and authoritarian values.
It seems reasonable, then, to expect a range of sub-types of democratic support in Latin
America’s new democracies: polyarchs, non-polyarchs, and any number of mixed sub-types.
Whether this is indeed true, and the relative proportions of citizens who fit these democratic
belief profiles, are empirical questions this study seeks to answer.
Thus, the analysis measures support for polyarchy as a profile of multiple orientations to
polyarchy’s main dimensions—contestation and inclusiveness—and the institutions and norms
that foster responsive government and citizen control of the agenda. To support polyarchy is to
support inclusive political and civil freedoms as well as the institutional safeguards that make
them effective by checking power vertically (between government and the governed) and
horizontally (between government branches). The resulting multidimensional profiles of support
for polyarchy have major advantages over previous measures. Rather than asking citizens if they
prefer “democracy,” the profiles gauge support for a particular conceptualization of democracy.
6
Like regime-level research, polyarchy profiles can map mixed belief systems that diverge from
an ideal-type polyarch.
Data and Methods
Just as Dahl employed institutional metrics to compare governments’ progress towards
citizen responsiveness and limiting its own power (1971, Appendix A), this study seeks to gauge
the extent to which citizens support these ideals and institutions. Whereas Dahl compared
regimes on several measures of public contestation and inclusive participation, multidimensional
belief profiles capture citizens’ orientations to the basic institutions that undergird these twin
dimensions. And just as the conditions for responsive government can be threatened by
legitimately elected leaders, support for it rings hollow unless accompanied by support for the
vertical and horizontal checks and balances that ensure their maintenance.
Therefore the analysis employs four indicators tapping support for public contestation
and inclusive participation, and the institutions, procedures, and norms that make them effective.
The data come from face-to-face, nationally representative AmericasBarometer surveys
conducted by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) in 2006 and 2007. 4
Unfortunately, the survey instruments in Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil lacked one or
more of the main question batteries. While these cases are regrettably excluded, the analysis
includes the following twelve countries: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The four indicators of
polyarchy support described below are summed into reliable scales 5 and normalized with mean 0
and standard deviation 1 (see Appendix 1 for question wordings and coding rules).
•
Public Contestation: An index combining orientations to (1) laws prohibiting (a) protests
and (b) the formation of social movements and (2) government censorship of (c)
7
television programs, (d) books in public libraries, and (e) critical media. Answers are
coded so that opposition to censorship and suppression of political organizing receive
high scores.
•
Inclusive Participation: An index fashioned from questions regarding the tolerability of
citizens who speak poorly of the regime (a) to vote, (b) to conduct peaceful protests
expressing political ideas, (c) to run for public office, and (d) to voice political views on
television. Answers are coded so that more inclusive orientations are scored higher.
•
Limits on Executive Authority: An index tapping beliefs about limits on executive power
via disagreement with the statements, “It is necessary for the progress of this country that
our presidents limit the voice and vote of opposition parties”, “Our presidents’ power
must be limited so as not to put our liberties at risk”, “The Congress hinders the work of
our presidents, and should be ignored”, and “Judges frequently hinder the work of our
presidents, and they should be ignored.” Each statement the respondent disagrees with
increases the value of the index, so high values represent preferences for restrictions on
executive authority.
•
Institutions and Processes: Two questions about whether suspending the operation of (a)
the legislature or (b) the Supreme Court would ever be justifiable. Answers are re-coded
so that support for these institutions and processes are scored high.
The first two indexes focus on Dahl’s twin dimensions. While the first one captures
support for the political and civil freedoms necessary for public contestation, the second
concerns support for extending these rights, even to those who disapprove of the regime. 6 The
third and fourth dimensions focus on checks and balances. Whereas the third index gauges
support for the president ignoring them, the fourth taps respect for the institutions charged with
8
exercising them. For Dahl, large-scale liberal democracy requires accountable executives,
representative institutions to aggregate preferences, and juridical institutions to interpret the
constitution and uphold the law. Absent these institutions, any political and civil freedoms
citizens enjoy will ring hollow and responsive government, citizen control of the agenda, and
effective participation will remain distant ideals.
The most common aggregation method in the democratic support literature is to collapse
the various measures into a single dimension of democratic support through a factor analysis
(Gibson et al. 1992, Moreno 2001, Mishler and Rose 2002, Inglehart and Welzel 2005, Norris
1999). This method assumes the data are structured on a single dimension with democratic
supporters at one extreme, citizens who reject democratic principles at the other, and comparable
individuals in the middle. This assumption is, nonetheless, frequently violated. For example,
Gibson et al. (1992) claim seven items tap a single latent factor named “support for democratic
rights, liberties, and institutions.” Democratic support is measured by respondents’ factor scores
on this single dimension. This first extracted factor has an eigenvalue of 3.19 and explains 46%
of the variance in the data. Just five of the seven variables load at 0.60 or above, with “political
tolerance” (0.25) and “rights consciousness” (0.41) loading much lower. Moreover, they discard
a second factor with an eigenvalue 0.99 – extremely close to the relatively arbitrary cutoff of 1.0
– that explains 14% of the variance. The ambiguity in this example suggests that, at the very
least, confirmatory factor analysis’s rigid linear assumptions must be tested empirically.
To test whether the linear assumptions hold for this data, the 15 indicators of polyarchy
support listed above undergo principle components analysis (see the web appendix for full
results). The results yield four principal components with eigenvalues greater than 1, with each
factor generally corresponding to one of the four indicators. 7 Cronbach’s α scale reliability
9
coefficient for these four indicators is quite low 0.21 with missing data imputed 8 – further
disconfirming the unidimensionality of these data and confirming the 4 separate dimensions we
use in our analysis. In other words, these indicators tap four separate dimensions and not a single
latent dimension and should not be combined into a single scale.
Given the theoretical proposition that citizens’ belief systems contain variegated
orientations to polyarchy’s core dimensions and the statistical evidence regarding the structure of
the data, cluster analysis appears superior to factor analysis for revealing the profiles of support
for polyarchy. Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis requires no a priori assumptions about
the nature or number of support profiles. 9 Schedler and Sarsfield (2007) capture the distinction:
“While factor analysis allows us to discern how different variables hang together across cases,
cluster analysis reveals how cases hang together across different variables” (8, emphasis added).
It classifies cases that vary along multiple variables using numerical distances called similarity
measures. Members of the same profile (cluster) are most similar (numerically proximate) to
each other on the four orientations to polyarchy described above, but most dissimilar
(numerically distant) to members of other clusters on these same orientations. By relaxing the
linearity assumption, cluster analysis better detects mixed support profiles for citizens’ whose
orientations to polyarchy are only weakly “constrained” (Converse 1964).
Specifically, the analysis uses agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis with squared
Euclidean distance as the similarity measure and Ward’s algorithm Ward’s method calculates the
sum of squared distances from each respondent to the mean of all variables and then minimizes
the sum of squares of any two hypothetical clusters that can be formed at each clustering step.
Cluster solutions are determined by Duda and Hart’s (1973) stopping rule.
The investigation proceeds in two steps. First, clusters are derived for the South
10
American countries (Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela) and Mexico. 10 Then, as an
out-of-sample check on the cluster solution, 11 the analysis is replicated for six Central American
countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Respondents
with missing values on the items making up the four variables in the analysis were excluded
from the cluster analyses. These respondents are subsequently imputed into clusters using
multiple imputations by chained equations (MICE) techniques (Royston 2005). 12 Five
replications of each country panel were generated (cf. Rubin 1987), and the entries reported in
Tables 2 are averaged across them. The cluster distributions and, subsequently, significant
predictors of the profiles do not change if missing values are excluded.
Distribution of Profiles of Support for Polyarchy in the Americas
Cluster analyses of both the Central American and South American samples suggest fivecluster solutions, i.e. five profiles of support for polyarchy. Across the two analyses the contents
of the profiles are nearly identical (see Appendix 2), a finding that enhances confidence in the
results’ robustness. Therefore results from the two samples are combined. To simplify the
presentation, variable values in the top third of the scale are considered “liberal”, in the middle
third “ambivalent”, and the bottom third “illiberal.” 13
(Table 1 about here)
The profiles are named according to their content. The first is named “polyarch” because
citizens with this profile register support for each of the central tenets of polyarchy under study.
Compared to citizens from other profiles, polyarchs champion contestation rights on a wholly
inclusive basis. They are also fervently committed to the functioning of congress and the courts,
and opposed to executive power grabs that threaten citizen control of the agenda. Analysts find
similar belief systems in Argentina (Powers 2001), Mexico (Schedler and Sarsfield 2007, 2009),
11
Russia (Carnaghan 2007), Belarus, Romania, and Bulgaria (Dryzek and Holmes 2002).
The percentages reported at the bottom of Table 1 indicate that while polyarchs comprise
17.9% of the sample, most citizens do not neatly approximate this ideal-type. Yet none of the
profiles fits an ideal-type non-polyarch; all respondents accept at least one of polyarchy’s
principles. The other four support profiles, comprising over 80% of the sample, are either
ambivalent towards or reject at least one of polyarchy’s principles. Interestingly, most
respondents support contestation, are ambivalent to inclusive participation, and divided on limits
to executive authority. Highlighting how these sub-types of polyarchy support deviate from
ideal-type polyarchs, their names reflect distinct orientations to the use and restriction of power.
The discussion below divides the four profiles into sets of two, beginning with “power
constrainers” and “power checkers” and followed by “power delegators” and “power refrainers.”
Both power constrainers and power checkers advocate a system of checks and balances.
Their liberal status on the “Limits on Executive Authority” and “Institutions and Processes”
dimensions means they bristle at presidential power grabs and seek to limit executives from
encroaching upon congress and the judiciary. Like most Latin Americans with mixed support
profiles, power constrainers and power checkers have limited tolerance for the participation of
political dissidents. These two profiles diverge, however, on public contestation. Beyond
supporting formal checks on the executive, power constrainers wish to use public contestation as
an additional constraint on the executive. In the literature, power constrainers closely
approximate the “intolerant democrats” Schedler and Sarsfield (2007, 2009) identify in Mexico.
Power checkers, in contrast, are wholly ambivalent about public contestation. Although
power checkers do not relish polyarchy’s core political and civil freedoms, they hedge their bets
against presidents with unfettered power, as their liberal orientations to limits on executive
12
power and institutions and processes attest. Thus they mistrust both executives and citizens’
abilities to limit them, placing their faith instead in formal institutions. This profile hints at the
beliefs that may underlie Carrión’s (2008) “liberal authoritarianism” (33).
Power delegators and power refrainers comprise another set of mixed profiles. Unlike the
previous two profiles, these profiles are less willing to make executives completely beholden to
institutional checks. Power delegators prefer the executive obtain wide powers, yet disavow full
autocracy. They do, however, support formal checks to keep the president within certain bounds.
Specifically, they oppose closing congress and the courts, but favor endowing the president with
extensive power over the agenda. They also believe that public contestation should exist as a
check on the executive. Though not a perfect match, this profile shares some traits with belief
systems identified in recent analyses of support for other forms of delegative democracy (Walker
2009, Carrión 2008, Seligson 2007).
By contrast, power refrainers prefer that executives simply refrain from acquiring powers
and potentially subverting citizen control of the agenda. Yet they imagine scenarios that would
justify the executive suspending state institutions that check its power—the congress and
judiciary. Power refrainer is the only profile that tacitly supports such a virtual autogolpe. This
precarious support suggests a general distrust of democratic institutions of all stripes.
The foregoing analysis suggests three conclusions. First, the five support profiles do not
fit on a single continuum but rather vary vis-à-vis the areas they support. Second, most citizens
hold a mixed profile of support for polyarchy. Power refrainers and power constrainers are the
most common, each accounting for almost a quarter of the sample. Power checkers comprise
roughly one fifth of the sample, and power delegators about one seventh. Hence most Latin
Americans sampled neither fully accept nor fully dismiss polyarchy’s key principles. Finally, the
13
conviction polyarchs show towards the basic norms of participation stands in sharp relief to the
mixed profiles’ ambivalence. 14 And the four mixed profiles hold distinct orientations to the
exercise of political power. Power constrainers and checkers seek to reign in the executive
through checks and balances, whereas power delegators and refrainers each accept one form of
checks and balances but not the other.
Competing Theories of Polyarchy Support
Widespread dissention from polyarchy’s ideals raises the question of why these groups
abandon them. Of particular interest is how well modernization theory, psychological factors,
ideology, and performance considerations differentiate polyarchs from citizens with mixed
support profiles. An extensive literature offers some guidance.
Modernization theory predicts economic development raises education and income levels
and encourages trust and collective action. In turn this promotes the moderation,
accommodation, cooperation, and bargaining norms that allow citizens “to cope with one of the
central dilemmas of democracy: to balance cleavage and conflict with the need for consensus”
(Diamond 1999, 166). Development also erodes traditional gender norms that impede women’s
participation in politics and the labor force and, thus, exposure to evolving values and resources.
Despite the theory’s appeal, evidence from new democracies regarding the relationship between
democratic values and education, income, and gender is mixed (e.g. Gibson et al. 1992; Booth
and Seligson 2009; Evans and Whitefield 1995; Seligson 2001, 2007; Mishler and Rose 2002;
Moreno 2001; Bratton et al. 2005; UNDP 2004).
Modernization theory also suggests age may be linked to polyarchy support. Inglehart
and Welzel (2005) demonstrate the growth of self-expression values they consider crucial for
democracy among successive young cohorts as material needs are increasingly met. In contrast,
14
there is some evidence that Latin Americans socialized under authoritarianism may be more
open to authoritarianism than cohorts from the transition and post-authoritarian periods (UNDP
2004, Lagos 2008).
The Civic Culture theorizes that democracy depends on a judicious number of citizens
who are psychologically invested in the political system (Almond and Verba 1963). Are
polyarchs more politically interested and sophisticated than their counterparts? Preference for
democracy increases with cognitive engagement in Africa (Bratton et al. 2005) and Chile
(Huneeus and Maldonado 2003) but not in Peru (Seligson and Carrión 2002) or Russia (Gibson
et al. 1992). Political engagement may be positively associated with democratic norms even if it
leads citizens to criticize practices that fall short of that ideal (Booth and Seligson 2009).
Democratization studies beyond Latin America examine the roles of race and ethnicity in
democratic culture (e.g. Dowley and Silver 2002, Bratton et al. 2005) while within Latin
America these matters have received far less attention. In their work on Mexico, Costa Rica, and
Chile, Basáñez and Parás (2001) summarize important racial effects as follows: “The darker the
person’s color, the less democratic their views” (150). A recent study finds ethnicity unrelated to
national pride, though ethnic minorities “are less persuaded of the existence of common values
among citizens in their countries” (Moreno 2008).
Are profiles of support for polyarchy a matter of ideology? With some exceptions, the
belief that democracy is the best system, rejection of unelected rulers, and political intolerance is
hypothesized to increase from Left to Right in Latin America (Seligson 2007). Gunther and
Hsin-chi (2007) find Left-Right placement and party preference correlate with a host of values
that define ideological cleavages in new and old democracies alike.
Citizens’ electoral experiences may inform their attitudes toward democratic principles.
15
In developed democracies, voting for losing candidates leaves citizens less satisfied with and less
supportive of democracy voting for election winners (e.g. Anderson et al. 2005). Electoral
“losers” in Latin America are less likely to perceive existing democratic institutions as legitimate
(Booth and Seligson 2009). Electoral winners, however, may be less likely to oppose an
executive’s attempts to suppress opposition from the public or other branches of government
(Moehler 2009). Thus it is unclear whether electoral winners or electoral losers are most likely to
endorse polyarchy’s principles of inclusive contestation and checks on executive power.
Presidential popularity poses a similar conundrum. If executives are responsive to the
interests and priorities of citizens, then the democratic values behind executive support may help
determine the processes of democratization. Incumbent approval translates into a rejection of
coups d’état in Peru (Seligson and Carrión 2002) and preference for democracy in Chile
(Huneeus and Maldonado 2003) and Africa (Bratton et al. 2005). Yet supporters of the president
may reject authoritarianism while eschewing democratic ideals. Instead they want few limits on
the president they cheer (Carrión 2008). The models below will, thus, test the extent to which
profiles of support for polyarchy, what Easton (1975) might term “diffuse political support,”
reflect incumbent approval, a form of “specific political support”, in the Americas.
A final question is whether support for polyarchy’s main tenets fluctuates with short-run
regime performance. Democratic support may be less tied to performance than support for
specific institutions, satisfaction with democracy, or incumbent popularity (e.g. Duch 1995).
Nevertheless, poor performance can lead citizens to question democracy’s basic premises
(Przeworski et al. 2000, 109; Feng 1997), as can poor governance in key areas like corruption,
discrimination, and crime (Evans and Whitefield 1995, Bratton et al. 2005, Seligson 2002,
Espinal et al. 2006, Weitz-Shapiro 2008, Booth and Seligson 2009). Yet we know little about
16
how performance affects more bedrock democratic principles like free expression, political
tolerance, and civil liberties.
Variables and Methods
The analysis tests which of the most prominent predictors in the literature distinguish
polyarchs from the four mixed profiles—power constrainers, power checkers, power delegators,
and power refrainers. The most theoretically relevant modernization/demographic variables are
age, gender, education, income, religion, and urban/rural residence (Appendix 1 reports full
question wordings and coding rules). Since surveys in several countries did not inquire about
ethnic identity, a dummy variable – scored 1 for respondents whose dominant language is
Spanish and 0 for those who primarily speak an indigenous language – is the proxy.
Two indicators tap psychological engagement in politics: expressed interest in politics,
and political knowledge, based on a battery of five factual questions about politics consistent in
each survey. Ideology is operationalized by dividing a 10-point Left-Right self-placement scale
into three dummy variables: Left Ideology, Center Ideology, and No Ideology (for those who do
self-identify with any point on the scale). Right Ideology is the reference category.
Political variables first distinguish those who voted for a candidate in the previous
presidential election from citizens who abstained or cast a blank/null vote (43% of the sample).
Among the voters, other variables identify those who voted for a losing candidate for president
whose party has won the presidency in the past (13.9%) and those who voted for a losing
candidate whose party has never controlled the executive (11%). Another variable gauges
evaluations of the president’s job performance. Finally, evaluations of the economy, personal
finances, and recent victimization of crime, corruption, and discrimination are included. 15
Aside from these individual-level variables, country dummies are included to control for
17
the different country trajectories. These country fixed effects also reduce heteroskedasticity due
to clustering across survey units that could result in overly small standard errors (Steenbergen
and Jones 2002) (see Appendix 3 for country-dummy results).
The first model compares polyarchs to each of the four mixed support profiles by making
polyarchs the base category in a multinomial logistic regression (Table 2). It is worth noting, that
certain variables that do not distinguish polyarchs from citizens in any of the four mixed profiles
do effectively distinguish among the four mixed profiles. In other words, some predictors that are
not statistically significant in Table 2 would be significant if another support profile were the
base category. The most theoretically relevant of these instances appear in the discussion below.
Why Do Citizens Support Polyarchy?
The two variables that have received the most attention by modernization theorists,
education and income, are both substantially related to support for polyarchy. The more years
citizens spend in school, the more likely they endorse the principles of public and inclusive
contestation and accountability. The predicted effect of increasing education from its minimum
to its maximum level is to increase the probability of fitting the polyarch profile by 88%. 16
Although education’s effect on polyarchy support is consistent with modernization theory,
education plays almost no role in distinguishing between alternatives to full support for
polyarchy. The only significant difference among the four mixed profiles is that power checkers
are slightly less educated than power constrainers. This suggests that although a lack of
education makes it unlikely that citizens are ideal-type polyarchs, it does not determine the
specific areas of polyarchy they reject.
(Table 2 about here)
Income has an effect similar to education. Wealthy citizens are 74% more likely to
18
adhere to the principles of public and inclusive contestation and to endorse checks and balances
than are the poorest citizens in the sample. Just as with education, though, income levels do not
significantly discriminate between the four less-than-polyarchic support profiles.
Modernization theories are sometimes invoked to explain generational differences.
Young citizens are significantly less likely to be power checkers than power refrainers.
However, age does not distinguish polyarchs from any other support profiles nor does it
significantly differentiate between any other mixed profiles. 17
Taken together, then, education and wealth set polyarchs apart from citizens with mixed
support profiles as modernization theories predict. But these variables poorly predict which
specific mixed profiles citizens are likely to fit. One possible implication is that education and
wealth instill tolerance towards the participatory rights of political dissidents. Thus
modernization theory provides little leverage on how citizens hold illiberal orientations toward
public contestation and the legitimate authority of elected and constitutionally defined
institutions. Other theoretical perspectives must be brought to bear on these questions.
Moving to cognitive traits, political engagement – both in terms of expressed interest in
and observed political knowledge – is associated with support for the core tenets of polyarchy.
Increasing political interest over its range boosts the probability of an average respondent being a
polyarch by 30%. A similar increase in political knowledge bolsters the chances of being a
polyarch by 59%. Unlike education and income, however, political interest and knowledge
distinguish among the mixed support profiles. Power constrainers, delegators, and refrainers all
tend to have low levels of political interest and moderate levels of political knowledge. In
contrast, power checkers tend to be just as politically interested as polyarchs (and are
significantly more interested in politics than citizens with the three other profiles) but are the
19
least knowledgeable about politics. As political interest reaches its maximum, the probability of
being a power checker increases by 12%; but as political knowledge reaches it maximum the
odds of being a power checker fall by 30%. This implies a link between political ignorance the
denial of popular participation as an important check on authorities.
Ideology also relates to support for polyarchy, though in nuanced ways not previously
considered. Compared to right-wingers, self-identified leftists are more likely to be polyarchs
than power checkers. An average citizen identified with the ideological left is 21% more likely to
be a polyarch than the average self-identified rightist. Otherwise, left ideology is uncorrelated
with alternative support profiles, a major non-finding given the sample size. Rather, polyarchs
tend not to identify with any part of the Left-Right ideological spectrum. Non-identification with
the ideological scale increases the probability of fitting the polyarch profile by 48%. In fact, the
citizens least likely to be polyarchs locate themselves at the center, not on the right, of the
ideological scale. Centrists, for their part, tend to be power constrainers or power delegators.
In addition to theories of modernization theory and cognitive engagement, the analysis
supports theories of democratic values that focus on short-term performance. Incumbent
approval correlates with ambivalence towards restraining presidential power and opposition
rights. Citizens who support the president may view opposition groups as a threat to their
interests and prefer a president with few checks on power (Carrión 2008). Hence strong
presidential approval could lead citizens to value autocracy, delegative governance (Walker
2009), or hybrid regimes. Polyarchs are the least adulating of their presidents of any profile,
especially compared to their power refrainer, power checker, and power delegator counterparts.
Polyarchy places the burden on rulers to limit their actions and to allow their opponents free
expression and organization. Specifically, moving presidential approval from its minimum to its
20
maximum values decreases the probability of an average citizen supporting polyarchy by 52%.
Not surprisingly, power delegators (who are willing to dramatically increase the president’s
power) tend to approve most strongly of presidents. Indeed, the staunchest supporters of the
president are twice as likely to be power delegators as the staunchest critics.
An interesting pattern emerges regarding previous electoral experience. 18 There are no
significant differences in democratic values between those whose favored candidate won the last
election, those who abstained, and those who supported a losing candidate whose party has won
in the past. But citizens who support perennially losing parties have different profiles of support
for democracy than the rest of society. In contrast to the findings in Anderson et al. (2005) but
consistent with work on Africa (Moehler 2009), Latin America’s perennial losers most value
polyarchy’s protections for political dissidents and free speech and its limits on executive power.
Losers are not withdrawing from democracy, they are mobilizing for its protections. So election
winners in Latin America may trust democratic institutions (Booth and Seligson 2009), but
access to power dampens their enthusiasm for polyarchy because polyarchy imposes limits on
election winners as forces them to respect opposition.
Finally, support for polyarchy’s principles is partially contingent upon short-term
performance. Much of this effect runs through presidential approval. If presidential approval is
excluded from the model, citizens who judge the national economy as strong or who report an
improved personal situation are significantly less supportive of polyarchy and the accompanying
restrictions on authority. Economic evaluations are also the main difference between power
delegators and power constrainers. By implication, executives who deliver a strong economy will
face less public opposition to rolling back freedoms, and less clamoring to restrict their authority.
Viewed together, the findings for presidential approval, previous electoral choices, and
21
economic performance suggest orientations to polyarchy are consistently shaped by short-term
political experiences. Positive evaluations of the sitting executive, especially in response to
success in stimulating the economy, open citizens to deviations from polyarchy’s ideals public
contestation, inclusive participation, and citizen control of the agenda. Presidents’ supporters
may be more willing to delegate presidents the authority to go beyond the restrictions polyarchy
idealizes. The good news, however, is that election losers are not rejecting democratic norms.
Instead, losing fosters support for government self-restraint and opposition rights.
Unlike economic outcomes, political outcomes (crime, corruption, and discrimination) do
not differentiate polyarchs from mixed profiles, even without presidential approval in the model.
But these variables do differentiate between the mixed profiles. Corruption and discrimination
victims are significantly more likely to fit the power refrainer profile—which balks at granting
executive extensive powers but remains wary of other formal institutions—than any other mixed
clusters. Yet power refrainers are not significantly more likely to think the national economy is
weak. This suggests that specific political failings undermine support for all major political
institutions, whereas economic failings focus citizens’ attention on the executive.
In summary, the analysis bolsters the validity of multidimensional profiles of polyarchy
support. In line with long-standing theories, support for polyarchy correlates consistently with
education, wealth, and political engagement. It is also related to a lack of ideological
identification and disapproval of the president. However, political interest, presidential approval,
and economic and political performance are what distinguish amongst the various sub-types of
polyarchy and help explain the specific deviations in support for polyarchy’s principles.
Discussion
Latin Americans’ regime preferences are not neat, and often defy simple categorizations
22
like “democrat” and “authoritarian.” While previous studies have discussed this possibility, the
corroborating evidence here it is based on a novel approach that incorporates the collective
wisdom of previous attempts to measure the multiple forms of democratic support in Latin
America. Like UNDP (2004), it begins with a rigorous conceptualization of the background
concept—in this case, polyarchy—and assumes orientations to it are multidimensional. Like
Schedler and Sarsfield (2007, 2009), the measurement approach is exploratory, and, like Carrión
(2008), it incorporates support for liberal rule. Unlike these previous approaches, it makes no
reference to “democracy” thereby enhancing the comparability of its findings across individuals
and countries. The results suggest citizens of the Americas fit one of five belief profiles in which
orientations to four dimensions of polyarchy are bunched categorically not arranged on a linear
continuum. While true polyarchs exist, their ranks are dwarfed by citizens who reject or are
ambivalent towards at least one of polyarchy’s core tenets.
Compared to their counterparts across the Americas, polyarchs stand out for their
vigorous support for contestation. But the four mixed profiles match polyarchs on support for
other dimensions of polyarchy. For example, power checkers are the only citizens who do not
embrace inclusive participation; only power delegators reject limiting executive authority; and
power refrainers alone deny the sanctity of horizontal institutions and processes. So while
polyarchs do not predominate in Latin America, they can potentially rally other citizen sub-types
in defense of democratic principles and norms.
The statistical analysis clarifies why individuals reject some of polyarchy’s principles.
All the mixed profiles lack the levels of education and wealth which seem to make polyarchs
embrace democracy. Orientations to public contestation and inclusive participation are driven by
political engagement and ideology. Hence power constrainers, who are ambivalent towards
23
participation, are not interested in politics, and power checkers, who support neither participation
nor contestation, tend to be politically ignorant and right-wingers. Orientations to political
institutions, by contrast, tend to reflect short-term political considerations and regime
performance. Thus power delegators, who strongly support the president, prefer to erase formal
boundaries to executive power and remain lukewarm on participation while those citizens who
are less enamored with the executive and especially his or her economic record support prefer
more limited government. Finally, as victims of corruption and discrimination, power refrainers
both reject the legitimacy of horizontal institutions and seek to limit presidential power.
The results allow us to revisit some central predictions of democratization theory.
Education and income strongly influence support for polyarchy, thus aligning with theoretical
expectations extending back to Lipset (1959, 1981) and Almond and Verba (1963). Yet shortterm political and performance concerns can weaken citizens’ support for these principles in
systematic ways. Most worrisome from the perspective of democratic theory is the relationship
between presidential approval and rejection of polyarchy. Successful presidents may use their
perceived efficacy to undermine the legitimacy of other democratic institutions. This suggests a
perverse cycle in which specific support for the president, grounded in mixed support for
polyarchy, undermines diffuse support for free contestation and participation. Whereas
presidential supporters appear to have lower resistance to executive consolidation of authority,
presidential detractors, and those whose candidate has yet to win power, seem to seek shelter in
rights and institutions that can prevent the growth of delegative democracy.
In light of this reality, the classification strategy employed here—analyzing profiles of
support for polyarchy—holds key advantages over existing approaches to measuring democratic
support. Conceptually, the measures portray polyarchs as citizens who support the values, norms,
24
procedures, and institutions undergirding polyarchy. Operationally, the profiles exclude direct
references to “democracy” in order to avoid the interviewer effects and problems stemming from
disparate definitions of “democracy” that taint existing multidimensional measures. Instead they
intertwine support for four dimensions polyarchy: public contestation, inclusive participation,
limits on executive authority, and horizontal institutions and processes. The goal of this approach
is to create measures of support for polyarchy that adhere closely as possible to Dahl’s original
efforts to conceptualize polyarchy (1971, 1-14) and operationalize it with existing measures
(ibid, Appendix A). Empirically, support for polyarchy is not assumed to be all of a piece, but
rather viewed as belief profiles in which support for the four dimensions of polyarchy cluster
categorically, not linearly. Confirmatory factor analysis clearly violates the linearity
assumptions, as do the subsequent inferential models. Thus polyarchy support profiles are well
suited to testing hypotheses about the cultural foundations of polyarchy and to advance the
debate over the measurement of democratic support than existing measures.
Nevertheless, a key implication of the present analysis is that if support for democracy is
multidimensional, then our theorizing about democratic support must take on a multidimensional
character as well. Moreover, this study demonstrates that theories of democratic support need to
specify the causal factors that lead citizens to reject specific democratic principles (or particular
sets of democratic principles) while clinging to others. Further work is thus needed to verify and
clarify these factors and to refine their theoretical linkages to the formation of mass democratic
values.
25
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Table 1: Profiles of Support for Polyarchy
Variable
Public Contestation
Inclusive Participation
Limits on Executive
Authority
Institutions and
Processes
Percentage of Sample
Polyarch
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Power Constrainer
Liberal
Ambivalent
Liberal
Power Checker
Ambivalent
Ambivalent
Liberal
Power Delegator
Liberal
Ambivalent
Illiberal
Power Refrainer
Liberal
Ambivalent
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Illiberal
17.89%
24.19%
19.36%
14.3%
24.25%
32
Table 2: Support for Alternatives to Polyarchy
Power
Constrainer
Power
Checker
Power
Delegator
Power
Refrainer
Education
-0.044***
-0.066***
-0.056***
-0.045**
(0.013)
(0.012)
(0.013)
(0.014)
Income
-0.076***
-0.088***
-0.082***
-0.056**
(0.020)
(0.015)
(0.016)
(0.018)
Age
-0.002
-0.005
-0.003
0.001
(0.002)
(0.003)
(0.003)
(0.002)
Political Interest
-0.161***
-0.051
-0.115***
-0.111***
(0.028)
(0.032)
(0.034)
(0.028)
Political Knowledge
-0.087***
-0.171***
-0.088***
-0.105***
(0.025)
(0.027)
(0.028)
(0.025)
Speaks the Dominant Language
0.179
-0.349
-0.096
-0.246
(0.227)
(0.237)
(0.258)
(0.217)
Left Ideology
-0.093
-0.373***
-0.119
-0.307***
(0.083)
(0.098)
(0.101)
(0.090)
Center Ideology
0.151*
0.123
0.191*
0.030
(0.071)
(0.085)
(0.081)
(0.074)
No Ideology
-0.308**
-0.508***
-0.434***
-0.598***
(0.113)
(0.104)
(0.110)
(0.098)
Voted for a Losing Candidate that Has Held Office
0.024
0.054
-0.166
0.026
(0.100)
(0.128)
(0.133)
(0.107)
Voted for a Losing Candidate that Has Never Won -0.227*
-0.112
-0.344**
-0.086
(0.102)
(0.110)
(0.111)
(0.102)
Abstained in the Last Election
-0.064
0.002
-0.127
0.064
(0.078)
(0.098)
(0.101)
(0.083)
Presidential Approval
0.123***
0.268***
0.378***
0.233***
(0.037)
(0.036)
(0.036)
(0.037)
Evaluation of the National Economy
-0.151**
-0.092
-0.054
-0.012
(0.044)
(0.048)
(0.038)
(0.046)
Evaluation of Personal Finances
-0.023
-0.022
-0.117**
-0.024
(0.037)
(0.044)
(0.043)
(0.041)
Victim of Crime
0.050
0.050
-0.107
-0.053
(0.067)
(0.080)
(0.082)
(0.075)
Victim of Corruption
-0.087
-0.027
-0.068
0.191
(0.094)
(0.087)
(0.126)
(0.109)
Victim of Discrimination
-0.215*
-0.213*
-0.079
0.030
(0.092)
(0.091)
(0.097)
(0.082)
Catholic
0.086
0.044
0.061
0.093
(0.077)
(0.084)
(0.085)
(0.062)
Female
0.158**
0.166*
0.080
0.010
(0.059)
(0.069)
(0.073)
(0.066)
Urban
-0.157*
-0.152
-0.115
-0.015
(0.073)
(0.083)
(0.086)
(0.075)
Constant
1.622***
2.259***
1.396**
0.935**
(0.435)
(0.517)
(0.475)
(0.408)
N
15342
* p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001, Standard Errors in Parentheses, Country Dummies Omitted
33
1
The Honduran case reaffirms democracy’s continued frailty when the military aligns with
factions within a regime.
2
For excellent and detailed reviews, consult Carrión (2008), Schedler and Sarsfield (2007),
Carnaghan (2007), and the papers presented Candidate Indicators for the UNDP Democracy
Support Index (DSI), Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University, May 5-6, 2006.
3
Support for democracy could be measured based on any definition. Polyarchy is chosen to
since regime-level measures of democracy chiefly tap variation on its two axes, contestation and
participation (Coppedge et al. 2008).
4
For additional information see http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/.
5
Scale reliability is calculated with Cronbach’s α: Public Contestation (0.77); Inclusive
Participation (0.87); Limits on Executive Authority (0.55); and Institutions and Processes (0.77).
6
Since the survey only asks about the participation of regime opponents rather than political
opponents or other less tolerated groups, the scope of the inclusiveness measure is somewhat
limited. Nevertheless, regime opponents serve as a nice reference point from which to measure
the depth of citizens’ tolerance and commitment to open elections.
7
These components jointly explain 68% of the variance in these variables.
8
See fn. 15 for details on the imputation method and model.
9
An alternative approach is to lay out all possible belief profiles from these four dimensions,
discuss their theoretical properties, and use a confirmatory analysis to attempt to identify them.
But with 81 possible combinations of these four variables, this is not tractable nor does the extant
theoretical literature provide strong guidance about which combinations are to be expected. Thus
exploratory methods are preferable. Observing the same clusters in the two sets of countries
analyzed, however, suggests these results are generalizable.
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10
These 6 countries are grouped because they have the largest populations.
11
Dividing the countries into two sub-samples was also necessary because the cluster analysis of
the unified sample outstripped the constraints of the software package.
12
In addition to the four variable in the cluster analysis, the imputation model includes: income,
education, age, gender, urban-rural, Catholic; socio- and ego-tropic evaluations of the current
economic situation; protest and civic group participation; civic activism index; life satisfaction;
interpersonal trust; system support; trust in the police, church, congress, judiciary, supreme
court, and political parties; presidential approval; political interest; Churchillian and Linzian
democratic support measures; support for a strong unelected leader; authoritarianism index.
13
This convention borrows from Schedler and Sarsfield (2007, 2009).
14
Means tests on contestation and inclusivness confirm polyarchs score higher than the mixed
groups (p < 0.01). The mixed groups are not statistically different from each other (95% level).
15
The survey did not contain questions asking citizens to look beyond their personal experiences
with corruption, crime, or discrimination and to evaluate trends at the national level.
16
Simulations performed with Clarify (Tomz et al. 2001), with all variables set at their mean.
17
Less theoretically relevant demographic variables have even smaller and more inconsistent
effects. Power constrainers and refrainers are 8-9% more likely to be female and polyarchs are
10% more common in urban areas, though this difference is significant only when compared to
power constrainers. Religion has no significant impact.
18
The correlation between presidential approval and previous vote choice is less than 0.13 and
the results do not change if only one of the two sets of variables is included in the model.
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