Latin American Political Culture and Citizenship Norms

Abstract

Latin American countries have a history of democracies interrupted by political unrest, civil war, human rights abuses, and military dictatorships. In the region, there have been several attempts to establish representative governments throughout the last decade, especially in post-dictatorship periods. However, scholars have questioned the quality of these achieved regimes, especially regarding their democratic quality. To what extent do democratic ideals coexist with authoritarian ideas? This chapter explores the extent to which support for authoritarian government practices is associated with different types of citizenship norms and evaluates the role of civic knowledge. Using a series of regression models with clustered errors, and data from Latin American countries in IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016, both the role of citizenship norms and civic knowledge in explaining students’ support for authoritarian practices were analyzed. The results indicate that, in Latin America, there exists a significant level of support for authoritarian ideas in younger age groups, which is consistent with previous research focused on the adult population. Additionally, results indicate that those students classified in duty-based and comprehensive citizenship profiles show higher levels of support for authoritarian practices. In contrast, students with monitorial and anomic profiles are less likely to support these types of practices. Finally, civic knowledge protects young people from authoritarian ideas and moderates the effect of different conceptions of citizenship norms. Results highlight the relevance of education for democratic citizenship, which could help on the legitimacy of the democratic system.