Evaluations, Referents of Support, and Political Action in New Democracies

Abstract

Discussions of political participation originally centered on cultural explanation, thus emphasizing the dynamics between cognitive and affective orientations of mass populations toward their polities and the role of the self in the political system (Gamson 1968; Easton 1965; Almond and Verba 1963; Dahl 1961; Campbell et al. 1960). Positive evaluations induce involvement, while negative attitudes hinder it. Despite “institutional” criticism, contemporary studies provide ample evidence for the validity of cultural explanations in comprehending protest behavior in post-industrial societies (Dalton 2001; Norris 1999; Klingemann 1999; Inglehart 1997; Jennings 1990). To understand involvement in elite-challenging activities in new democracies, however, the cultural premises should be re-specified. Not only the types, but also the referents of support, have had differentiated effects in citizens’ propensity to participate during the third wave of democratization. Specifically, I claim that support for the new political institutions positively affected participation, while assessments of incumbent authorities negatively impacted engagement after regime change in Latin American and Eastern and Central European nations. Probit estimations using data from the 1995-2001 World Values Surveys support this proposition while they also suggest that participation was mainly influenced by the strength of their orientations toward democracy at similar levels of governmental discontent between two individuals.