Report 2021, Latinobarómetro
Unanimous dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy in practically all the countries surveyed in this latest edition of Latinobarómetro.
The inequalities that already existed before the pandemic have only worsened over the last year and a half, accompanied by a growing distrust of governments and institutions. Protests have become widespread and the prediction of "change" hangs over every electoral process that has its date - perhaps delayed in the face of so much health exceptionality - during this year 2021 and the years to come.
According to Report 2021 Latinobarómetro, satisfaction levels - an evaluation of the effectiveness of the governance model based on the election of representatives - have progressively increased since 2016, a year in which the climate of polarisation has increased with the use and abuse of digital content through social networks, and distrust precedes waves of protest in many of the countries undergoing changes in their governments.
Apart from Uruguay, which maintains a high level of satisfaction with its democracy (68 points), the rest of the countries, including those that have been and are benchmarks in the region: Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Brazil, have lower levels of satisfaction with democracy than the average of the 18 countries.
The indicators of trust in institutions show that political parties and the elected representatives themselves in the clearest expression of democracy, elections, are the institutions that have fallen most on the scale of trust, compared to the church and the security forces, which remain the mainstays when everything else goes down the drain.
The figure of the president, which ranks in the middle among the other institutions, reflects a trust index that has been declining since the beginning of the financial crisis (2007/2008) and has failed to recover, reflecting the inability of their governments to correct the problems of inequality and discrimination suffered by the vast majority of citizens.
Electoral institutions, which have been very important during transitions of government in most countries, have provided guarantees of transparency and security for voting in elections, reflecting a growing level of trust since 2017. Electoral institutions in Uruguay and Colombia maintain very high positions compared to the average level of trust in the rest of the countries.
Distrust in political parties is a growing trend of disaffection, a clear disconnection between the electorate and their representatives, a rejection of narratives that have been unable to mobilise people since the end of the financial crisis.
Forty-six per cent of those polled said that people should always vote, and 31 per cent said that they should vote, but that they should also protest. In sum, 77% of Latin Americans say it is good to vote. Voting is the most popular thing about democracy. It is its Latin American characteristic par excellence.
Finally, it should be noted that since 2008, the crisis of party systems and representation, the decline of politics, the proliferation of populist candidates and presidential candidates, the atomisation of movements and the low confidence in the institutions of democracy are related to the increase in massive self-censorship by part of the region's population, leading to a majority conviction that "people do NOT say what they really think, in politics".
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