Crime and Support for Democracy in Africa and Latin America

Abstract

Much of the scholarship on democratization has a myopic focus on economic conditions. Using Afrobarometer and Latinobarómetro survey data, the article examines how crime victimization and perceptions of crime influence citizens' attitudes toward democracy. After elaborating on several theoretical frameworks that help illuminate the relationship between crime and support for democracy, the article applies fixed effects and generalized hierarchical linear models to the cross-national survey data. The results show that a citizen's perception of public safety is as important a factor as any socio-economic variable in predicting support for and satisfaction with democracy. This finding is important because widespread support for democracy among the citizenry is considered a requisite for the consolidation of democracy.