Legitimate Grievances Preferences for Democracy, System Support, and Political Participation in Bolivia

Many cross-national surveys examine the extent to which citizens of new democracies believe that democracy is always preferable to any other form of government. There is little evidence, however, regarding how such attitudes affect citizen behavior. This article examines the case of Bolivia, asking whether and how Bolivians’ attitudes toward democracy affect participation, including contacts with public offi cials and involvement in political parties and social movements. Through analysis of nationwide survey data, I show that preferences for democracy have little effect on participation in party meetings or protests. Examining the relationship more carefully, I then show that, for Bolivians who favor institutional methods of representation, support for democracy increases attachment to the traditional political system and decreases protest; for citizens who favor popular methods of representation, it has the opposite impact. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on democratization, which often confl ates preferences for democracy with political stability. With the proliferation of new democracies in the past two decades, researchers have set off on major cross-national endeavors to document over time and across countries the extent to which citizens believe that democracy is always preferable to any other form of government. Projects such as New Democracies Barometer, Afrobarometer, and Latinobarómetro have asked citizens about a great many political values and attitudes, but probably no other questions have drawn as much attention and concern as those regarding beliefs about democracy. But what does a belief that democracy is always preferable imply for politics? In 2008, for instance, This is a revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in New Orleans, January 2007. Thanks to the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University for the use of survey data, which were collected under a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Thanks also to Jonathan Reilly, Mitchell Seligson, John Markoff, Chris Bonneau, Scott Morgenstern, Steven Finkel, the members of the Comparative Politics Reading Group at the University of Pittsburgh, and LARR’s anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback on previous versions of this article. I also thank the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh for a research grant enabling fi eldwork in Bolivia in 2006. Most important, I am grateful to the many Bolivians who generously made time to answer my questions. All errors in analysis and interpretation are, of course, my own. P5128.indb 102 9/10/09 10:08:17 AM LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES 103 the Latinobarómetro reported that only 34 percent of Guatemalans and 43 percent of Mexicans always preferred democracy (Corporación Latinobarómetro 2008). So will the rest tend to participate less in democratic politics? Are they inclined to take some type of action to unseat their (at least formally) democratically elected governments? Do majoritarian voting rules require a preference for democracy—that is, a belief that democracy is the best form of government for one’s country—on the part of a majority? In this article, I address these questions using the case of Bolivia, investigating the impact of preferences for democracy on three types of nonelectoral political participation: (1) making contact with public offi cials, (2) participation in party politics, and (3) involvement in protests that led to the resignation of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Bolivia is an important case for answering these questions, as dramatic popular unrest led to the fall of two democratic presidents and the disintegration of the traditional party system between 2003 and 2005. Given the low measured levels of support for democracy and the system during those years in Bolivia, it is reasonable to expect that these attitudes had some impact on political events. Indeed, a premise of the study of democratization has been that “the consolidation of democracies rests on public support” (Payne, Zovatto, Flórez, and Zavala 2002, 25; see also Diamond and Linz 1989; Hagopian 2005; Huntington 1991; Linz and Stepan 1978, 1996). Researchers have worried that low measured preference for democracy is a harbinger of a reverse wave bringing back authoritarianism. In an analysis of 2002 Latinobarómetro data, the UN Development Programme (2004, 131) argues that “authoritarian political forces [will] fi nd in citizen attitudes fertile terrain for action.” Similarly, the Inter-American Development Bank argues that data on “public attitudes towards democracy” predict “to what extent [the region’s democracies can] be expected to withstand current and future pressures and threats” (Payne et al. 2002, 25). In a study of a single country, it is diffi cult to test rigorously whether citizens’ aggregate level of support for democracy affects that country’s political stability. Instead, I examine the impact of individual-level democratic preferences on individual-level behaviors that, when aggregated across masses in voting booths and street protests, affect democratic stability. In this article, I lay out the argument that preference for democracy had little overall effect on participation in social movements that destabilized the traditional Bolivian party system. Instead, the impact was contingent on individuals’ beliefs about the importance of participation in a democracy. Analysis supports both hypotheses. For Bolivians with participatory attitudes toward representation, preference for democracy increased participation in both confl ictual and nonconfl ictual political activities. Among those with more conventional perceptions of representation, in contrast, preference for democracy decreased protest. Without P5128.indb 103 9/10/09 10:08:17 AM 104 Latin American Research Review differentiating by participatory attitudes, however, I fi nd that democratic preferences had little impact on either protest or conventional forms of participation; the only exception is that preference for democracy negatively affected the probability of contacting offi cials. System support, a key alternative conceptualization of legitimacy, was a stronger predictor of participation. Meanwhile, I fi nd strong evidence that attitudes related to the political system are less important for participation than is connection to mobilizing community groups. A brief comment about terminology is in order. Researchers have conceptualized the notion of legitimacy—including both popular support for democracy in the abstract as well as for particular democracies—in a great many ways.1 Here I use the phrase “preference for democracy” to refer to expressed support for democracy as an abstract ideal.2 In addition, I use “system support” to refer to the extent to which a person believes that the actual political system is basically just and deserves respect (Muller 1979; Muller, Jukam, and Seligson 1982).3 There are two competing arguments regarding how democratic preferences and system support should affect political behavior. First, some 1. Legitimacy has been operationalized as support for authoritarianism, satisfaction with (one’s actual) democracy, trust in national representatives and institutions, and support for democratic values and norms such as tolerance. Factor analysis of attitudes toward the political system in Costa Rica found seven different dimensions (Booth and Seligson 2005). Although these concepts are closely related, there are important differences between them. A person might be convinced that democracy is the best form of government (i.e., have high preference for democracy) but believe that his or her nominally democratic country fails to uphold basic values (i.e., have low system support). Inglehart has argued that self-expression values such as subjective well-being, postmaterialism, interpersonal trust, and tolerance for diversity are better predictors of citizens’ actual support for democracy than are responses to explicitly political questions (Inglehart 1988, 1990, 1997; Inglehart and