Consequences for Democracy

In this unit, we bring together many of the issues discussed in previous units and discuss their consequences for democracy. What is the current state of public opinion about democracy in Latin America? Are people generally satisfied with their democracies? As we mentioned earlier, we can describe the region as having "disjunctive citizenship" (Holston and Caldeira) or "brown areas" (O'Donnell) where political rights are respected, but civil, social, and economic rights are lacking. How do these failures affect the legitimacy of representative institutions? What is the danger, if state failures persist? Who do people blame for these failures? The texts by Mainwaring and Diamond help us find answers to all these questions, particularly in the Andean region.

Mainwaring and Diamond use different language to talk about what they see as the problem. Are they talking about basically the same thing? Do they have the same diagnosis? How are these two articles different?

In addition to the readings, we will review surveys conducted by Latinobarómetro, a Chilean organization that has been polling public attitudes toward democracy in Latin America since the nineties. These polls serve as the basis for Mainwaring's claims, and they show great variation across countries. In general, the more economically developed countries show a higher level of satisfaction with democracy than poorer countries. Does this mean people are only willing to support democracy if it supplies economic goods? Our goal is to put this finding in context, and to analyze the state failures and crises of representation that lead to people being dissatisfied with democracy.