Easier Said than Done: Citizens’ Stated and Revealed Democratic Commitment in Latin America

This project examines citizens’ commitment to democracy and their role in monitoring politicians’ undemocratic behavior. The most commonly used measures of support for democracy come from public opinion surveys, based on questions that may suffer from social desirability bias and overlook the trade-offs that citizens face when choosing candidates. We scrutinize stated commitment to democracy, as measured by both explicit survey responses and implicit choice experiments, and compare it to revealed patterns of democratic commitment. We use panel surveys from Colombia and Peru in 2022, and a third wave in Peru following a significant undemocratic move by former President Castillo. We find low implicit democratic commitment, even among those who explicitly endorse democracy. We also characterize a discernible democracy-ideology trade-off that influences voting choices. Moreover, we find that citizens interpret real-world undemocratic events through a partisan lens and consequently reshape their own democratic attitudes to align with their political leanings. Overall, our study underscores the limited efficacy of citizens as effective checks on democracy, especially in polarized democratic environments, and highlights the complexity of balancing democratic principles with ideological leanings. This is coauthored with Hernán Carvajal (Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia) and Loreto Cox (Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile).

Speaker: Natalia Garbiras-Díaz, Assistant Professor of Business Administration; Harvard Business School; Harvard University

Moderated by Alisha Holland, Professor of Government, Harvard University.