Region - Democracy is not delivering
The new LatinoBarometro poll is bad news for democracy advocates
The LatinoBarometro poll published last week confirmed that support for democracy in the region is weak. The chart below captures a full set of numbers, and the report has plenty of other graphs showing that support for democracy has declined while support for hypothetical non-democratic alternatives has risen.
While the numbers are down over the past two decades, the polling done in late 2020, six months after pandemic lockdowns began, did not appear significantly worse than the polling in 2018 (a key point made in the Economist’s coverage of the poll). What does it say that people were so disillusioned with democracy in 2018 that the failures of governments to better manage the pandemic didn’t cause that much harm?
Many democracy advocates spend time criticizing the abuses, corruption and poor governance of dictatorships. Totally true. There are few if any examples of dictatorships that govern effectively to improve the lives of their populations. In nearly every real world example, dictatorships benefit the powerful and harm the vast majority of the population. So asking people if they would accept an effective dictatorship is like asking them if they want a free unicorn.
Still, democracy hasn’t declined because people suddenly want hypothetically great dictatorships or for other various weird ideological reasons. Instead, support for democracy is declining because Latin America’s citizens are exhausted with the abuses, corruption and poor governance of their democratically elected leaders. While citizens have never been particularly thrilled with the results delivered by democracy, the past few years have seen a notable decline, as shown by the chart below.
Three countries stand out as unusual in the polling that are worth highlighting.
Uruguay - Analysts think Uruguay has a decent democracy and so do its citizens. It is the happy story outlier in the data.
Venezuela - As it has in polling for many years, Venezuelans support democracy and oppose potential military rule in higher numbers than their neighbors. It’s a constant weird exception driven in part by the fact that both sides of the political spectrum in Venezuela see themselves as the true representatives of democracy. However, a greater number of Venezuelans now view democracy as failing to deliver positive results compared to previous polling, an important indicator that the population wants change from the current situation.
El Salvador - The research done in 2020 suggests Salvadorans experienced sudden improvements in their democratic system with the election of Nayib Bukele. They view the government as more effective, democracy more likely to deliver and the fight against corruption as finally being successful. In many ways, this speaks to how discredited El Salvador’s traditional parties and political elites are.
Anyone who has read what I’ve written about Bukele in recent years knows I disagree with the viewpoint that El Salvador’s president has helped democracy and the fight against corruption. But the data show that many Salvadoran citizens believe what Bukele is selling. It’s effective populism in a region where the results from many technocratic leaders have only led to disillusionment.