The rise of populism and the left in Latin America

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 81-95

  Seligson, Mitchell A ^a,b  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP)   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547747279     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2007.0057     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. Kurt Weyland defines populism as: "a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers. This direct, quasi-personal relationship bypasses established intermediary organizations or deinstitutionalizes and subordinates them to the leader's personal will." Kurt Weyland, "Clarifying a Contested Concept: Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics," Comparative Politics 34 (October 2001): 14.
2. Among the classic works exploring the elements of the populist tradition are Michael L. Conniff, ed., Populism in Latin America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999);
3. and J.M. Malloy, Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977).
4. For more recent view, see Kenneth M. Roberts, Changing Course: Parties, Populism, and Political Representation in Latin America's Neoliberal Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
5. The AmericasBarometer covers Latin America plus four Caribbean countries and the United States and Canada. In this article, when the term "Latin America" is used, it includes the Caribbean as well.
6. Ronald Inglehart et al., Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook Based on the 1999-2002 Values Surveys (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2003), 200.
7. Some regional surveys present a mix of national samples and urban samples, while others limit themselves to the official national language, excluding significant linguistic minorities; since intranational variation on many opinion and behavior variables is often wider than international variation, direct comparisons of samples with sharply varying coverage can be seriously misleading. See Mitchell A. Seligson, "Improving the Quality of Survey Research in Democratizing Countries," PS: Political Science and Politics, January 2005, 51-56.
8. The countries were stratified into a small number of geographical regions (usually numbering four to six). Within each region, moreover, the samples were substratified into urban or rural zones. Questionnaires translated into widely spoken indigenous languages, such as Quechua and Aymara in Bolivia, and three Mayan languages in Guatemala were used where appropriate in each country.
9. As in the case of the AfroBarometer and the World Values Survey, careful survey work covering a wide array of countries is often practically impossible to accomplish within a single year. Additional countries are being added to the AmericasBarometer in 2007, but the data for those countries will become available only after this essay goes to press. Experts from participating countries met in Costa Rica in May 2006 to agree on a standardized core questionnaire, after which each country's delegation was free to add items related to specific issues relevant to their home country or to specific interests of the researchers. For the training manual and questionnaires, visit www.lapopsurveys.org.
10. A 0-to-100 scale would have provided a true neutral point, but the AmericasBarometer conforms to the World Values Survey standard of a 1-to-10 scale.
11. The WVS has expanded its range of countries over the years, moving from a concentration on advanced industrial democracies to one that now includes many countries from the developing world. Looking exclusively at the seventy countries surveyed since 1999, the mean ideology score is 5.58, nearly identical to the entire series since 1981, indicating no worldwide shift in the post-Cold War epoch. Worldwide, nonresponse on this question is typically higher than on other survey items. The WVS mean is based upon 193,531 individuals who responded to the ideology question on at least one wave of the WVS. The AmericasBarometer encountered a nonresponse rate of about 20 percent, which is typical for many surveys.
12. This comparison includes a subset of ten countries from 2004 that were also surveyed with the identical survey item in 2006.
13. See Fabrice Lehoucq, "Costa Rica: Paradise in Doubt," Journal of Democracy 16 (July 2005): 140-54,
14. as well as the subsequent exchange between Lehoucq and former Costa Rican president Miguel Angel Rodríguez in the April 2006 issue of the Journal of Democracy.
15. William Mishler and Richard Rose, "Five Years After the Fall: Trajectories of Support for Democracy in Post-Communist Europe" in Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democatic Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 78-99.
16. See, for instance, Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960);
17. and David Easton, The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science (New York: Knopf, 1953).
18. We measure legitimacy by a 5-item series, each item in which is scored on a 1-to7 scale and then transformed into a 1-to-10 index. Details can be found in John A. Booth and Mitchell A. Seligson, "Political Legitimacy and Participation in Costa Rica: Evidence of Arena Shopping," Political Research Quarterly 59 (December 2005): 537-50;
19. Mitchell A. Seligson, "The Impact of Corruption on Regime Legitimacy: A Comparative Study of Four Latin American Countries," Journal of Politics 64 (May 2002): 408-33;
20. and Mitchell A. Seligson, "The Measurement and Impact of Corruption Victimization: Survey Evidence from Latin America," World Development 34 (February 2006): 381-404.
21. Analysis of individual country data, not reported here, finds variation in these regression patterns. Extensive studies regarding each of the AmericasBarometer countries are available at www.lapopsurveys.org.
22. An obvious alternative explanation is that as today's young people age, they will come to resemble their elders and therefore will be equally resistant to populist appeals. Unfortunately, the panel data that would help us to distinguish between those effects related to age in general and those related to membership in a specific generational cohort do not exist. See Glenn Firebaugh, Analyzing Repeated Surveys (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997).
23. Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).