The Party's Over: Citizen Conceptions of Democracy and Political Dissatisfaction in Mexico

Abstract

Mexicans are disenchanted with democracy-or at least with democracy in their country. A decade after the watershed 2000 presidential contest, they are already deeply distrustful of democratic institutions and actors, politicians, parties, and parliament. The contrast with the heady optimism of the 1990s could not be greater. Former President Ernesto Zedillo described the 1997 midterm elections, when the opposition wrested Congress from the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as a "democratic fiesta." The phrase aptly characterizes the citizen effervescence of the entire decade. Now, the party's over. This rapid, deep disillusionment is especially puzzling because one would expect the euphoria following the culmination of Mexico's transition to electoral democracy in 2000 to have been greater and more enduring than it has been. Decades of struggle for free and fair elections might have made citizens more forbearing of the shortcomings of the new government brought to power by these elections. Typically, democratic regimes' legitimacy affords them a "reservoir of good will" that enables governments to withstand "performance deficits." This reservoir, in theory, keeps citizens from generalizing their dissatisfaction with democratic governments to democracy as an ideal. 1 Democracies are insulated from frustration with economic downturns by their legitimacy of origin and ability to modify economic policy without changing regimes. 2 Yet a mere nine years or less sufficed in Mexico for satisfaction with democracy to fall dramatically from its peak in 1997. Why are Mexicans so dissatisfied with their democracy? The combination of a citizen conceptualization of democracy that emphasizes social equity-a "substantive" view of democracy-with poor government performance in just that respect is partly responsible. That is, even after accounting for other factors that bear on evaluations of democracy, how Mexicans define democracy exercises an important, independent effect on how satisfied they are with it. Specifically, citizens who view democracy as either political rights ("liberal" democrats) or elections ("electoral" democrats) are more satisfied than substantive democrats. The causal relationship between conceptualizations of democracy and satisfaction with it is both undertheorized and underexplored empirically. Exploring definitions of democracy in three Latin American countries, Roderic Ai Camp has established that Mexicans tend to view democracy in socioeconomic terms, but he does not relate this

Beyond the Balance Sheet: Performance, Participation, and Regime Support in Latin America

“…The most obvious place where this would be relevant is in the most studied behavior impact of support: on the decision to engage in contentious politics. Many scholars have argued that low regime support tends to lead citizens to forsake institutional mechanisms of participation in favor of taking to the streets (Crow, 2007(Crow, , 2010Klosko et al, 1987;Muller & Opp, 1986;Opp et al, 1981). The framework presented here provides a more nuanced set of predictions.…”

“…But what, if any, expectations, desires, or preferences do citizens have that are intrinsic to the processes and procedures of democratic rule? Conceptual (Collier & Levitsky, 1997) and public opinion (Crow, 2007(Crow, , 2010von Mettenheim, 1990von Mettenheim, , 1995 work on conceptions of democracy has attempted to address this question, but the democratic subtypes they tend to focus upon (e.g. liberal, electoral, substantive, or egalitarian) lack a firm a priori theoretical basis.…”

“…Discovering the source of support requires a clear notion of the standards of evaluation. The literature on conceptions of democracy attempted to identify such standards by specifying characteristics of democracy which citizens might value (Collier & Levitsky, 1997;Crow, 2007Crow, , 2010Diamond, 1996). However such analyses have been consistently hampered by the extreme difficulty of classifying survey respondents as this or that type of democrat.…”

“…Specifically, they took the proposition that excessive mass participation in politics was normatively undesirable and went a step further, arguing that it was also empirically impossible due to the apathy of average citizens (Michels, 2001;Mosca, 1939;Sartori, 1984). These authors assumed that most people were not and would never be concerned with politics, and would therefore rationally and voluntarily limit their political participation to that which is necessary for the pursuit of their private interests (Crow, 2007(Crow, , 2010Downs, 1957;Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2001. Within this paradigm, participation is viewed as a cost or an expense, something rational individuals are expected to avoid if possible.…”

“…Stability is not a binary variable; it presents in shades of degree, and when taken as such the importance of legitimacy is much more readily apparent. An enormous body of scholarship exists demonstrating the link between dissatisfaction with democracy as practiced and contentious and even anti-systemic political behavior (Crow, 2010;Klosko, Muller, & Opp, 1987;Lichbach, 1995;Madsen, 1987;McAdam & Tarrow, 2010;Muller & Opp, 1986;Opp, Burow-Auffarth, & Heinrichs, 1981;Rhodes-Purdy, 2012;Tarrow, 2000). Since the original march of los pingüinos in 2006, waves of protests have crested in Chile, one after another, with almost no respite.…”