Civil Liberties and Democratic Commitment in Latin America
Grants to Support Faculty Fellows' Research
Why do citizens support democracy in post-authoritarian contexts? In our book project, we argue that commitment to democracy is not rooted in economic interests but on concerns over civil rights. In particular, citizens durably support democracy when they believe that it protects their civil liberties better than autocracy and when institutions of collective memory facilitate the formation of these beliefs. We collect data through a multi-methods approach that includes untapped archival survey data, survey experiments fielded in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, and a novel measure of citizens’ beliefs about the economic and civil liberties performance of democracy and autocracy in every Latin American country, which will soon be available through the current round of the Americas Barometer Survey carried out by the Latin American Public Opinion Project. We are requesting support from the Kellogg Institute to fund travel to Argentina to conduct focus group research aimed at probing how citizens conceptualize civil liberties and assess trade-offs between material interests and democratic procedures.
