The Legitimacy Puzzle in Latin America: Political Support and Democracy in Eight Nations - Softcover

Booth, John A.; Seligson, Mitchell A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521734207 ISBN 13: 9780521734202

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Political scientists for more than two decades have worried about declining levels of citizens' support for their regimes (legitimacy), but have failed to empirically link this decline to the survival or breakdown of democracy. This apparent paradox is the "legitimacy puzzle," which this book addresses by examining political legitimacy's structure, sources, and effects. With exhaustive empirical analysis of high-quality survey data from eight Latin American nations, it confirms that legitimacy exists as multiple, distinct dimensions. It finds that one's position in society, education, knowledge, information, and experiences shape legitimacy norms. Contrary to expectations, however, citizens who are unhappy with their government's performance do not drop out of politics or resort mainly to destabilizing protest. Rather, the disaffected citizens of these Latin American democracies participate at high rates in conventional politics and in such alternative arenas as communal improvement and civil society. And despite regime performance problems, citizen support for democracy remains high. These findings resolve the puzzle - citizen actions and values, even among the disaffected, likely strengthen rather than weaken democratic governments.

About this title

Book Description

Political scientists have worried about the declining support of citizens for their regimes (legitimacy) but have failed to link it empirically to democratic stability. This book addresses the "legitimacy puzzle," using exhaustive empirical analysis of high-quality survey data from eight Latin American nations. It examines political legitimacy's structure, sources, and effects and reveals why low legitimacy may not be destabilizing.

About the Author

John A. Booth is Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. In addition to his four coedited volumes and fourteen articles and chapters with this study's coauthor, Mitchell A. Seligson, he is the author of Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion, and Change (fourth edition 2006 coauthored with Christine J. Wade and Thomas W. Walker); Costa Rica: Quest for Democracy (1998); and The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (second edition 1985). He has published articles in a wide array of scholarly journals in the United States and Latin America, is an associate editor of International Studies Quarterly, and serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society.

Mitchell A. Seligson is the Centennial Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a Fellow of the Center for the Americas and of the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies. He founded and directs the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), which conducts the Americas Barometer surveys that currently cover twenty-two countries in the Americas. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and others and has published more than 140 articles, fourteen books, and dozens of monographs. His most recent book is Development and Underdevelopment: The Politics of Global Inequality (fourth edition, 2003, with John Passé Smith).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521734207
• ISBN 13: 9780521734202
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376