Legitimacy and Democratic Commitment. Contemporary Impasses in Latin America

Maria do Socorro Sousa Braga, Gabriel Avila Casalecchi

Abstract


Given the context of alternation of political groups closer to the extreme right in Latin American countries in the last national elections, the objective of this article is to assess political attitudes of citizens and their relationship with changes in the political regime that allow us to identify the level of the “reservoir of political legitimacy” and commitment to democracy in this region. This analysis is done through empirical measures of the Latinobarómetro. The study revealed at least two impasses of Latin American democracies: first, the reservoir of commitment to the political regime is very low, demonstrated by the low support of societies for democracy and their institutional structure; second, democratic legitimacy is becoming less effective, as there are high rates of dissatisfaction and distrust with the performance of both the political regime and the performance of the traditional political class.


Keywords


political legitimacy, democratic commitment, representative democracy, Latin America

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/al.2019.7.213-230
Date of publication: 2019-12-27 22:11:31
Date of submission: 2019-12-27 18:48:23


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