Do perceptions of components of democracy have any influence on the evaluation of the national political system?

Responsible researcher: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo

Article title: BASIS OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY IN BRAZIL: ADHERENCE TO VALUES AND PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

Authors of the article: Ednaldo Aparecido Ribeiro

Location of intervention: Brazil

Sample size: 1149 interviews

Sector: Economic Policy & Governance

Type of intervention: Interview on perception of the political system

Variable of main interest: Assessment of the political system

Assessment method: Others

Policy Problem

Democratic legitimacy helps to establish an intermediate path between rationality and the socialization of individuals to explain the levels of support granted to objects of the political system.

Olson (1999) explains collective action in political groups through the premise that individuals tend to develop strategies to maximize resources, while Downs (1999) adopts assumptions of rationality to explain the political behavior of the government, parties and voters in family democracy . Therefore, the article seeks to verify whether these arguments are valid for the issue of legitimacy, especially in democracies that have not yet been consolidated.

Assessment Context

There are two theoretical levels of support for the regime, diffuse and specific, according to Easton (1968). In the first, there are the basic values ​​linked to the abstract acceptance of the fundamental principles of the democratic regime. The second contains assessments of the concrete functioning of the institutions that make up the political regime and the performance of its operators. In this way, the first level of legitimacy points to the importance of prolonged processes of political socialization of individuals, while the second level addresses that support can be affected in the short term by positive or negative performances of institutions and political leaders.

Therefore, it must be considered that citizens are capable of evaluating performance, deciding to support or reject political objects in isolation or the political system as a whole. Even when there are negative evaluations, they do not immediately lead to a decline in diffuse support, so declining levels of democratic legitimacy may not immediately pose a risk to democracies (Norris, 1999; Dalton, 2004).

Mishler and Rose (2001) point out that, for research on young democracies with an authoritarian past, citizens' assessment of the new regime's performance should be emphasized, as they have little understanding of democratic ideals. Furthermore, when testing the realistic and idealistic approaches, they find that although the idealistic approach is useful in stable democracies, it does not convincingly explain support for the regime in new democracies. In this way, the author uses the realistic approach in the Brazilian case, as it is a new democracy, seeking to identify the explanatory power that privileges the rational assessment of citizens despite the regime's performance.

Policy Details

The database produced by the World Values ​​Survey for the period from 1995 to 1997 was used. Since individuals do not have sufficient clarity about the meaning of the word democracy, the following question was asked in relation to democracy:

“People have different views on the government system in this country. Here we have a scale that measures how things are going: 1 means very bad; 10 means very good. Where on this scale would you place the political system that exists today?”

Furthermore, it was necessary to add some measures that could influence the degrees of legitimacy that individuals express. Below is a list of these questions.

Table 1: Questions asked of citizens

In relation to the self-positioning of individuals on the ideological spectrum, it made it possible to analyze the impact of ideological affiliation on levels of legitimacy. Social capital variables are fundamental factors in explaining the success of democracies.

Given this, the author will estimate the impact of each variable on the scale that measures individuals' assessment of the existing regime at the time of the study, using the Enter and Stepwise . The latter automatically presents a list of models indicating which one has the greatest explanatory potential.

Results

The results demonstrated that the evaluation of the regime in force at the time was mostly negative, where the average evaluation was 3.2 on a ten-point scale, suggesting that democratic legitimacy in Brazil is still not guaranteed.

When estimating the impact using the Enter , it was found that income and perception of the particular economic situation do not influence the assessment that citizens have of the political system they live in. In the same vein, the perception of how widespread corruption is in public administration does not have a significant impact, even though 57.9% of those interviewed believe that almost all public office holders are involved in corrupt practices.

None of the sociodemographic variables had a significant result, as did the institutional trust variables. Therefore, the variables referring to congress/deputies, senators and the judiciary system did not have a significant impact, which was expected, given that in Brazilian democracy the executive branch has a clear preponderance in comparison to the other powers (Pereira and Mueller, 2000 ). Self-positioning on the ideological scale, as well as measures of voluntary political participation, were also not significant.

Stepwise model detected only the eight variables that exert a significant influence. More than 68% declared having no or little interest in politics, this is something negative, given that this is an important indicator of the civic culture of a population (Almond and Verba, 1989). Adherence to post-materialist values ​​demonstrates that the population is replacing traditional and survival values ​​with rational and self-expression values, putting pressure on political systems towards democratization.

The evaluation of the performance of political leaders showed an interesting impact, where 57.3% of those interviewed chose the options “satisfied” and “very satisfied”. Furthermore, by excluding legislative institutions and the judiciary system, trust in the executive stands out even more, suggesting that those interviewed consider the executive as a fundamental institution of the existing democratic system. The contact established between citizens and institutions proved to be significant, where frequent contact with the public service significantly impacts the evaluation of the political system.

The results of the study validate the realistic approach, since the variables of individuals' perceptions regarding the performance of different components of democracy have a significant influence on the evaluation of the national political system.

Public Policy Lessons

As discussed throughout, high levels of legitimacy depend on positive performance evaluations, but the dissemination among the population of values ​​and ideals compatible with democratization is equally necessary.

Reference
RIBEIRO, Ednaldo Aparecido. Bases of democratic legitimacy in Brazil: adherence to values ​​and performance evaluation. Public Opinion, v. 13, no. 1, p. 74-96, 2007.