Democracy Paradox Podcast
About the Episode:

Support for democracy is rising across the Americas after more than a decade of decline, but what kind of democracy do citizens actually want? Noam Lupu, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy and LAPOP Lab, joins Justin Kempf to discuss findings from the latest AmericasBarometer and Pulse of Democracy. They explore why better economic and security conditions may be strengthening democratic support, even as distrust of political institutions persists; how citizens can embrace democracy while supporting illiberal leaders; and what attitudes toward representation, inequality, generational change, and political polarization reveal about the future of democracy across the region.

Full Transcript

Show Notes:

For much of the past decade, AmericasBarometer data documented declining support for democracy and falling trust in democratic institutions across Latin America. This year’s findings offer a more hopeful picture: as economies have improved and concerns about security have eased in parts of the region, support for democracy has begun to rebound. But Noam Lupu emphasizes that the recovery remains modest. Many citizens still feel poorly represented by their political systems and judge democracy in part by whether governments actually deliver improvements in their daily lives.

That tension becomes especially important when considering what citizens mean by democracy. Lupu discusses the concept of illiberal majoritarianism, developed in work by Abby Córdova and Géssica de Freitas, which helps explain why voters may support elected leaders who weaken courts, legislatures, or other constraints on executive power. El Salvador offers a vivid example: citizens who see longstanding institutions as unresponsive or captured by elites may regard a leader who bypasses those institutions while reducing crime and delivering other results as more democratic, not less. The result is a central paradox of democratic backsliding: actions that erode liberal democracy can be understood by supporters as expressions of popular rule.

The conversation also examines who citizens believe democracy represents. Survey respondents express a strong desire to see younger people and people from different social backgrounds in office, while the actual pool of candidates remains disproportionately older, wealthier, male, and lighter skinned. Lupu argues that these gaps cannot simply be attributed to voter preferences because many citizens never receive a meaningful choice among candidates from different backgrounds. At the same time, demographic and social changes across Latin America are elevating new political concerns, including generational inequality, housing affordability, gender, religion, and other cultural issues.

Finally, Kempf and Lupu consider what recent elections actually say about ideological change in the region. Although right-leaning parties have recently won elections in several countries, the survey does not show a comparable wholesale shift in how citizens identify ideologically. Anti-incumbency and changing issue priorities may matter more than a broad movement to the right. For Lupu, the larger democratic challenge is whether political institutions can become more responsive and representative while retaining the checks and balances of liberal democracy. If they cannot, distrust of those institutions may continue to strengthen the appeal of populist alternatives.

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