Democratic Legitimacy and Public Insecurity: Crime and Democracy in El Salvador and Guatemala

Political Science Quarterly

Volumn 118, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 627-644

  Pérez, Orlando J ^a  

^a CENTRAL MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 2142684475     PISSN: 00323195     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-165X.2003.tb00408.x     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. James Holston, "Citizenship in Uncivil Societies" (paper presented at the conference, Democracy and the Rule of Law: Institutionalizing Citizenship Rights in New Democracies, (McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 19-20 March 1998).
2. I b i d.
3. David H. Bayley, "A Foreign Policy for Democratic Policing," Policing and Society 5 (June 1995): 79.
4. Juan J. Linz, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, & Reequilibration (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 16.
5. Ibid., 18-23.
6. Ibid., 27-38.
7. See William Stanley, Risking Failure: The Problems and Promises of the New Civilian Police in El Salvador (Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, September 1993).
8. Chapultepec Peace Accords, signed 16 January 1992. Chapter 2, Introduction, accessed on the website of Centro de Paz, El Salvador at http://www.cepaz.org.sv/CEPAZ2000/biblioteca_mar.htm.
9. Ibid., Section 1.a.
10. See William Stanley, Protectors or Perpetrators? The Institutional Crisis of the Salvadoran Civilian Police (Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, January 1996).
11. Procuraduria para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, Cuadros Estadisticos de Resoluciones flrmadas de Junio 1999 a Mayo 2000, accessed on the website of Republica de El Salvador at http://www.pddh.gob.sv/resol.htm.
12. Stanley, Protectors or Perpetrators?
13. U.S. Department of State. Background Notes; El Salvador, accessed at http://www.state.gov.www/background_notes/elsal_0008_bgn.html, August 2000.
14. Stanley, Protectors or Perpetrators?
15. Accord on Strengthening of Civilian Power and Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society, signed 19 September 1996. Complete text of the Agreement can be found at the website of the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala at www.Minuagua.guate.net/Acuerdosdepaz.
16. Washington Office on Latin America, "Executive Summary: Rescuing Police Reform: A Challenge for the New Guatemalan Government," accessed at http://www.wola.org/guatepolicerptex.html, 2000.
17. I b i d.
18. I b i d.
19. I b i d.
20. While the data sets are generally not available to the public, those interested in seeing results from the surveys can do so at http://www. latinobarometro.org.
21. To make it easier, however, for the reader to compare these responses, the items are converted into a familiar 0-100 metric scale (commonly used in test grades in Centigrade thermometers). The conversion is accomplished by subtracting 1 from each score, so that they all have a 0-6 range rather than a 1-7 range. Then each score is divided by 6, so that they now range from 0-1, and then the scores are multiplied by 100. In the case of Guatemala, the original questions were measured using three possible answers: "a lot," "little," or "no" trust. For purposes of comparison, the items were receded so that "a lot" is 100, "little" is 50, and "no" is 0.
22. In the case of Nicaragua (survey conducted in 1998) 7 percent paid a bribe and 33 percent witnessed someone paying a bribe. In Bolivia (survey conducted in 1998), 27 percent said they had paid a bribe to a policeman and 46 percent said they witnessed someone paying a bribe.
23. I performed a series of multicollinearity diagnostic tests to make sure that the independent variables were not highly correlated. The results were negative. Both the Tolerance and Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) statistics were well within the acceptable range. In addition, the bivariate correlations among the independent variables were low.
24. World Bank, "Crime and Violence as Development Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean: The State of Rio de Janeiro and The Inter-American Development Bank" seminar on The Challenge of Urban Criminal Violence. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2-4 March 1997.
25. Data on Latin America and the Caribbean are derived from the Health Situation Analysis Program of the Division of Health and Human Development, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The figures are based on mortality by cause of death, supplied by PAHO member countries. These data are maintained in PAHO's Technical Information System database. The homicide rate for Latin America in 1994 was 53.1, while it was 20.5 for the Caribbean. All the above cited by Mayra Buvinic, Andrew Morrison, Michael Shifter, Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Framework for Action, Technical Study, Sustainable Development Department, Inter-American Development Bank, March 1999.
26. In 1996, the number of murders per 100,000 inhabitants was 140 in San Salvador, 102 in Cali, 80 in Rio de Janeiro, and 6 in Santiago de Chile. See Pamela Orpinas, "Who is Violent?: Factors Associated with Aggressive Behaviors in Latin America and Spain," Pan American Journal of Public Health 5 (April 1999): 232-243.
27. John Brehm and Wendy Rahn, "Individual-Level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital," American Journal of Political Science, 41 (July 1997): 999-1023.
28. Nancy Bermeo, "Getting Mad or Going Mad? Citizens, Scarcity, and the Breakdown of Democracy in Interwar Europe," accessed on the website of the Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine, at www.democ.uci.edu/democ/papers/bermeo.htm, 1999.
29. During the review process, doubts were raised about the validity of these questions. First, as stated earlier, a test of internal consistency, based on the average inter-item correlations, indicates relatively high levels of reliability (that is, Cronbach Alpha of 0.68). Second, some of the items come from the work on authoritarianism by Robert Altemeyer (See Robert Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). Third, by their very nature closed-ended survey instruments sacrifice subtlety in order to increase our ability to generalize across individual respondents and nations. Fourth, the low levels of missing data (for example, from 3-6 percent for each question) indicate that respondents understood the choices they were presented with and were capable of answering them without hesitation. In addition, given the low levels of education among many in Latin America, there is every indication that greater flexibility and subtlety will increase confusion and missing data rather than add clarity to the survey results. Fifth, by asking a series of questions the survey instrument attempts to capture the multidimensional nature of support for authoritarianism, thus reducing the validity issues raised by any one single question. In other words, the cumulative effect of using a reliable scale ensures us that these questions are indeed measuring an authoritarian syndrome among respondents.
30. For additional analysis of these questions and the Guatemalan survey in general, see Mitchell A. Seligson, Malcolm B. Young, Cynthia Harmll, Dinorah Azpuru de Cuestas, and Max Eduardo Lucas, "Guatemalan Values and the Prospects for Democratic Development: With Emphasis on Civil Society Participation and Attitudes Regarding Crime, Due Process and Authoritarian Regimes," Development Associates (January 2000), Details of the Costa Rican survey can be found at La Nación, 23 October 1999 and in the electronic edition, www.nacion.co.cr for that date.
31. The categories were receded to create a scale of increasing support for democracy where 0 represents strong hand and authoritarianism and 100 represents committed democrats.