Mecanismos de democracia direta na América Latina : a percepção dos cidadãos sobre a eficácia do regime

• Autor(a) principal: Menezes, Daiane Boelhouwer
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_RS
• Texto Completo: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/4730
• topic: REGIMES POLÍTICOS; DEMOCRACIA; AMÉRICA LATINA - POLÍTICA E GOVERNO; SOCIOLOGIA - AMÉRICA LATINA; CNPQ::OUTROS::CIENCIAS SOCIAIS

This thesis is about the relationship between the mechanisms of direct democracy (MDDs), i.e. plebiscites, referendums and citizen-initiated votes, and citizens' perceptions of the democratic regime. Hypotheses are tested on the influence of the MDDs on the presidential approval, on trust in democratic institutions (Congress and political parties) and on regime performance, measured through external efficacy, namely the belief that voting can change the future. Data are from Latinobarómetro and encompass surveys carried out annually in 16 countries, from 1996 to 2010. Multilevel models are used to analyze the data. If institutions as MDDs can increase the legitimacy of these more concrete dimensions of democracy, this is a quicker solution than economic, social and cultural transformations. This study relies on rational choice theory assumptions which state that citizens can make informed and rational judgements as to whether or not their regime meets their standards of how it should work, while still considering the various influences of diverse contextual and institutional factors. The explanatory variable the MDDs was tested in five different forms: short-term effects (occurrence and weighted occurrence), long-term effects, i.e., the cumulative number of MDDs, type of mechanism and issues quantity and relevance. Multilevel models, the alternative to time series analysis when there is not a sufficient number of observations over time, have not looked like good substitutes when information regarding the cases and the dependent variables behavior were considered. However, despite the methodological limitations imposed by data and the rarity of the events, it is possible to say that, holding constant citizens' perceptions of the country current economic situation, interpersonal trust, education, age, and in some cases, presidential approval and trust in institutions, in Latin America, the use of national mechanisms of direct democracy about issues of broad interest do not damage citizens' support to the more concrete regime dimensions (or representative democracy specifically, maybe the biggest concern on MDDs), on the contrary, MDDs improve, in different degrees, according type, nature of the issues and the historic of the country's MDD experience, the political support. Related to the explanations taken into account, although in the presidential approval model and in the models of trust in institutions the government performance is much more important, in the model of the vote, the cultural and institutional explanation gain more ground and all the three have basically the same relevance. Among them, it is possible to highlight the interpersonal trust, education, mandatory plebiscites and MDDs involving issues, many or few, of great general interest.