Latinobarometro 2010: Latin American Public Opinion

[Judi Lynn]

Latinobarometro 2010: Latin American Public Opinion
US foes are among the more democratic regimes in Latin America, according to their people
By Kevin Young
Tuesday, December 07, 2010

On December 3 the Chilean polling firm Latinobarómetro released its annual public opinion poll of eighteen Latin American countries. The poll provides valuable clues about citizens’ views, and should be taken seriously in any assessment of Latin American political and social realities.

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Political and Social Democracy: Basic Trends

As in past years, one of the central questions measured respondents’ level of satisfaction with the state of democracy in their country. “Democracy” was left ambiguous, with respondents free to interpret the term as they see fit. Uruguay finished first out of eighteen countries with an amazing 78 percent of respondents saying they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their democracy, nearly double the regional average of 44 percent. Among US antagonists, Venezuela tied for fifth with 49-percent satisfaction, about the same as last year. Bolivia, meanwhile, declined significantly from 50-percent satisfaction in 2009 to 32 percent this year, dropping to sixteenth in the region. Among close US allies, Colombia tied for ninth at 39-percent satisfaction, and Peru and Mexico came in last with just 28- and 27-percent satisfaction, respectively. A similar question, discussed in the final section below, measured “support for democracy” and yielded similar results, except that Venezuela jumped to first place and Bolivia to fourth <4>.

One crucially important question asked respondents about the extent to which “government decisions are designed to serve a small few.” This question, perhaps more than any other, measured respondents’ perceptions of how well the formally-democratic systems in their countries function in practice—that is, where those systems rank in the spectrum from genuinely participatory to more exclusionary styles of political democracy. The dubious “winner” in this question was Argentina, where 75 percent agreed that government decisions benefited a chosen few, followed by Paraguay (73%), Colombia/Brazil/Costa Rica (66%), Mexico (65%), and Peru (63%). The countries with the fewest numbers of cynical people were Uruguay (42%), Nicaragua (49%), and Bolivia and Venezuela at 52 percent. The opposite query yielded similar results: the members of the latter group were all among those where the most people felt their country “is governed for the good of all the people” (Uruguay was first, with an impressive 59 percent); the former group all finished in the bottom half <5>. A “thriving democracy” need not allow its citizens any actual input into government policy, it seems.

A set of questions also measured respondents’ confidence in political and legal institutions. Contrary to caricatures of Venezuela as a creeping dictatorship where a strongman is systematically eroding democratic institutions, Venezuela finished in the upper third when citizens were asked to rate their confidence in the judicial system (tied-4th), in Congress and politicians (2nd), and in “government” in general (6th). Venezuela outranked Colombia, Mexico, and Peru on all these questions, and in most cases the latter three countries were well below the regional average. Bolivia’s position was more ambiguous, higher than Mexico and Peru on most measures but outranked by Colombia on others <6>.

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/latinobarometro-2010-latin-american-public-opinion-by-kevin-young