Peru ’ s confidence Gap

Despite record-breaking economic performance, Peru has the region's lowest percentage of citizen satisfaction with public institutions. p eru stands out as one of Latin Amer-ica's economic success stories—even beating out some of its larger neighbors who have escaped the worst effects of the global economic meltdown. While Latin America's economies grew an average of 4.6 percent in 2008, marking the fifth consecutive year of economic growth at rates exceeding 4 percent, Peru ended last year with a record four-year run of growth at rates above 6 percent. In fact, in both 2007 and 2008, it was the second fastest-growing economy in the region. Peru's good fortune is expected to continue. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has predicted that economic growth in Peru will reach 5 percent in 2009—the highest growth of all Latin American countries and more than twice the expected rate for the whole region. 1 So why are Peruvians so anxious? Recent public opinion polls show that most Peruvians exhibit a degree of discontent with their political institutions that is usually associated with situations involving civil strife and economic stagnation On the surface, Peruvians should have a lot to feel optimistic about. The high inflation of the late 1980s and early 1990s, reaching an astonishing 7,481 percent in 1990, is now just an unpleasant memory. Last year, Peru's inflation rate was 6.7 percent, two percentage points lower than the average for Latin America. According to ECLAC statistics, the percentage of people living in poverty in Peru also fell from 48.6 per cent in 2004 to 39.3 percent in 2007. The polls, however, highlight a problem that goes much deeper than concerns about economic security: the absence of trust in public institutions. Data from AmericasBarometer, led by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) of Vander-bilt University under the direction of Mitchell Seligson, show that Peruvi-ans exhibit very low levels of political trust 2 as measured by an index