Participation and Democracy in Latin America: The Individual Determinants of Political Participation

Recent studies on participation identify an ambiguous scenario. It is characterized by a reduction in traditional kinds of citizen participation and a considerable increase in anti-establishment forms of mobilization. Some proposals for understanding it point to the dangers of apathy in terms of legitimacy of democracy; others view debate as an impetus for deepening that form of government by means of a critical citizenry. This paper investigates the determinants of the two general types of conduct in the Latin American context. It seeks to identify, by means of multivariate techniques and using data from the most recent tendency of the World Values Survey, the individual attributes and characteristics that explain political participation among Latin American publics. Adapted from the source document.