Awakening or Apathy? Civil Society in Latin America after Bureaucratic Authoritarianism
Year: 2012
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Measures of democracy often include an organized polity as a necessary condition for a developed democracy. The strength of civil society can indicate the degree of trust in the system and civic networks can be apolitical training ground for broader political movements. In this paper, I address the question of how civic engagement in democracies may be shaped by past experience with dictatorship. I analyze the effect of a particular form of authoritarian rule, bureaucratic authoritarianism (BA), on civil society in Latin America. I hypothesize that countries that have experienced bureaucratic authoritarianism will have fewer civil society organizations than other Latin American countries, as a result of past repression of the civic sector. By examining a cross-sectional data set of 17 Latin American countries I analyze the lingering effect of BA on civil society strength in the democratic regime. I find support for my primary hypothesis: I confirm that people in post-BA societies are less engaged in voluntary organizations. They are, however, consistently more willing to participate in mass political action. Among countries with past BA regimes, those that had harsher civil society repression show less civic engagement in post-authoritarian democracy. When used as a measure of how engaged people are in their society, and ultimately how invested in their country, the varying degrees of civil society strength across Latin America indicate that bureaucratic authoritarianism caused deep and long-lasting disruptions that will take time to heal, though these citizens continue to recover from the memories of past abuses.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Christina Kiel
Institution: Tulane University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2271273524