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Copyright 1997 National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University
Press. All rights reserved.

Journal of Democracy 8.3 (1997) 125-138

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Latin America's Smiling Mask

Marta Lagos
Tables
Public Opinion in New Democracies

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the way in which democracy has become rooted in
Latin America, one must consider not only the formal and institutional bases of politics, but also the
nonrational or prerational cultural traits that form such an important part of the region's soul. During the
last half-century in particular, writers from Mexico's Octavio Paz and Colombia's Gabriel Garca Mrquez
to Argentina's Julio Cortzar and Peru's Mario Vargas Llosa have sought to describe this soul. Their
works offer insights into the deeper attitudes toward life and society that lie beneath political beliefs and
behavior. In The Labyrinth of Solitude, Paz described the Mexican soul and in the process touched on
problems that affect the whole region and underlie the process of democratic consolidation in Latin
America today:
The North Americans are credulous and we are believers; they love fairy tales and
detective stories and we love myths and legends. The Mexican tells lies because he
delights in fantasy, or because he is desperate, or because he wants to rise above the
sordid facts of his life; the North American does not tell lies, but he substitutes social truth
for the real truth, which is always disagreeable. We get drunk in order to confess; they get
drunk in order to forget. They are optimists and we are nihilists. . . . We are suspicious and
they are trusting. We are sorrowful and sarcastic and they are happy and full of jokes.
North Americans want to understand and we want to contemplate. They are activists and
we are quietists; we enjoy our wounds and they enjoy their inventions. . . .
What is the origin of such contradictory attitudes? It seems to me that North Americans
consider the world to be something that can be perfected, and that we consider it to be
1
something that can be redeemed.
[End Page 125]
Given the history of the region, with its legacy of Spanish (as well as Portuguese) colonialism followed by
the rule of large landowners and the prevalence of poverty and authoritarianism, it is not surprising to
recognize the origin of the common tendencies that Latin Americans have developed as a consequence:
to remain silent regarding their true feelings and intentions, and to emphasize appearances. Silence and
appearance--the twin progeny of distrust--have historically been crucial tools for survival. The habits of
keeping silent and maintaining appearances underlie the attitudes, opinions, and behaviors that are at the
center of the Latin American soul. Paz describes this attitude as a "smiling mask." 2
The data presented below will show that deeply rooted sociocultural traits remain highly relevant to
democracy in Latin America. The region has many a democracy that belies social-science generalizations
about the prerequisites necessary for that form of government. One could say that in some cases,
democracy itself is a kind of smiling mask that has learned to survive through silence about lingering

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authoritarian institutions and practices (as in Chile), or through the appearance of a party system with
effectively one party, as in Mexico.
Latin American democracies have had to come to grips with myriad institutional and political problems:
the organization of parties, the recruitment of younger generations into key elites, the fostering of stable,
nonpatrimonialist public administration, and the like. Brazil and Venezuela have weathered corruption
scandals serious enough to have brought down presidents. More recently, Ecuador has worked its way
through a constitutional crisis in which Congress deposed a populist president, Abdal Bucaram, who
was leading the country into deep political and economic turmoil.
More than a few Latin American democracies have had to grapple with grave economic problems left
behind by outgoing military regimes. Acting against a background of excessive public spending, inefficient
systems of taxation, and cumbersome state structures, many newly democratizing or redemocratizing
countries have turned to economic reform, privatizing state-run companies and making the government
more of a regulator than an owner. Along with privatization, Latin American democracies have embraced
market liberalization and the elimination of commercial barriers in their quest to achieve higher economic
growth and lower inflation.
In some countries, such as Chile, economic reform took place before democratization; in others, such as
Argentina, it came after, and the new democracy had to face the repercussions when reform gave rise to
certain hardships. In Argentina, these repercussions were of such enormity that President Ral Alfonsn
had to leave office early, handing the reins over to Carlos Menem in July 1989, five months before the
latter's scheduled inauguration date. The new president, faced with a [End Page 126] serious economic
crisis, enacted a program of still deeper economic reforms. He gained reelection with a clear majority in
1995, after having campaigned for and won a constitutional change that allowed him to succeed himself.
In Chile, as soon as democracy was restored in 1990 (after 17 years of dictatorship) it found itself
having to cope with a totally laissez-faire economy wherein privatization had created a strata of very
powerful entrepreneurs who to this day wield more power than the political parties that supposedly
represent them. Environmental problems and monopolies are among the consequences of that heritage.
Throughout the region, economic change has had an enormous impact on politics at both the institutional
and individual levels. New or restored democracies have had to address simultaneously political and
economic reform. Clearly, there can be no political stability without economic growth, and sustained
growth is impossible without a solid democratic institutional basis. But the relationship is not unilinear; the
solidity of a democracy in citizens' eyes is not solely a function of economic growth.
In addition to economics, one must take into account political culture. Despite the pioneering 1959
decision of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba to include Mexico in their classic comparative study of civic
3
culture, the subject of political culture has not been a popular one among analysts of Latin America.
These analysts have insisted, first, that differences between ethnic groups, social classes, and city
versus country dwellers render a generalized concept of Latin American civic culture unattainable; and
second, that political behavior is determined more by economic relationships and political structures than
by attitudinal orientations.
The data presented here, which come from a Latinobarmetro survey conducted in 17 countries of the
region, confirm that the social and political culture of Latin America, despite a certain degree of
heterogeneity, does present many common traits. 4 This essay will stress these shared traits, largely
leaving aside individual country differences because of space constraints, and will conclude that there is
a common civic and political culture that can be summarized in the figure of the smiling mask.

Trust and Its Effect on Institutions

Three items from the 1996 Latinobarmetro shed light on the shortfall of interpersonal trust that lies
close to the heart of what ails Latin American social and political culture. The survey items were
designed to elicit information concerning interpersonal trust, honesty, and beliefs about the extent of
law-abidingness in the respondent's own society.
The first item asks about interpersonal trust (Table 1). Ronald Inglehart [End Page 127] has
demonstrated that such trust correlates positively with GNP and democracy: a country whose citizens
express a high level of interpersonal trust is also more likely to be democratic and to have a relatively
high GNP. 5 In Uruguay, one out of three citizens trusts others most of the time; the rest of the region

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shows still lower proportions of such trust, ranging from barely one in four (Argentina, Paraguay, and
Colombia) to only one in ten (Brazil and Venezuela). The contrast with established democracies such as
Sweden is huge. There, according to the 1990 World Values Survey, six out of ten people trust others. In
Canada, the comparable figure is five out of ten. These data alone give an indication of the difficulties
facing democratic civic culture in Latin America.
The second item measures respondents' perceptions of the extent of honesty among their fellow citizens.
This item is directly related to trust, for people who believe their neighbors to be dishonest will hardly be
inclined to trust them. In only two Latin American countries, not surprisingly, is the perception of
widespread dishonesty a minority phenomenon. Outside of Paraguay and Uruguay, majorities believe
that most of their fellow citizens are not honest. [End Page 128]
The third survey item asks people to say how law-abiding they believe their fellow citizens to be. In Peru,
Brazil, and Argentina, more than 80 percent of the respondents expressed the belief that their
compatriots were not obeying the laws. Uruguayans once again stand out for their relatively positive
attitudes, with "only" 50 percent of them saying that their fellow Uruguayans were only slightly or not at
all law-abiding.
There is a significant degree of correlation among these three variables in each of the 17 countries.
Survey data thus confirm what novelists and poets have long sensed and suggested: there is a common
regional heritage of distrust. The lack of interpersonal trust is at the core of the problem of very low
confidence in institutions (another finding of this and other surveys). If not even people are trusted, how
can institutions be trusted? Except for the Roman Catholic Church, in which 43 percent of all respondents
across the region expressed a very high level of trust, no institution in any country enjoys a level of trust
that is significantly higher than the level of interpersonal trust in that country.
The existence of this "trust ceiling" is not the whole story, however, for levels of confidence in some basic
institutions have been rising over time. In many countries, for example, trust in the police and the courts
has risen since the inauguration of democracy, indicating an increase in democratic legitimacy. Thus
while starting levels of confidence in a given society may be low, the observable upward trend may be
the more significant indicator. In other words, the confidence that institutions enjoy at the outset may be
less important than the pace at which that confidence grows.
As mentioned above, low perceived levels of honesty and law-abidingness are tokens of low
interpersonal trust. These attitudes permeate society and affect human behavior in numerous areas,
breeding everything from aggressive driving to tax evasion. In response, Latin American
bureaucracies--both public and private--commonly demand endless certifications and proofs of good
faith. In some countries, you need an official "survival certificate" to prove that you are alive. Or you
might walk into a bank with cash in hand, only to be told that you cannot open an account in which to
deposit it because you have nobody to "recommend" you. If a society has institutionalized distrust so
thoroughly that you need to furnish a personal reference in order to persuade a bank to take your
money, the implications for democracy can be imagined: people who lack "connections" often cannot get
benefits or services or exercise rights that are formally theirs because the entryways to "the system" are
guarded by impenetrable thickets of red tape.
When distrust is built into the public and private sectors like this, democracy stands on problematic
ground. The difficulty is not so much [End Page 129] with democracy itself as with the civic culture that
every democracy must presuppose as its base. Nor is the problem purely political. Throughout the
region, economic reform and modernization are running up against these deeply rooted public attitudes,
yet there is still little awareness that it will take the efforts of entire national educational systems to
address the problem of pervasive distrust.
The three "trust" measurements indicate some of the consequences of the region's social culture that
must be taken into account when considering the degree of democratic consolidation there. Is distrust so
great that it makes Latin America unique in this respect among the regions of the world? 6 Is the burden
of the past so great that history determines the fate of Latin America with something like Max Weber's
7
"loaded dice," such that the probability of distrust affecting events increases with each throw?

Civic Culture
By measuring the capacity and willingness of citizens to participate in political life, Almond and Verba
show how one may identify two types of political culture: the "subject" culture and the "citizen" culture.

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The subject culture is characterized by a passive acceptance of the political system, little tendency
toward communication, and little willingness to participate.
What principally distinguishes the "citizen" culture, according to Almond and Verba, is that the subject role
(as well as the "parochial" role, which involves the individual in nonpolitical activities) is combined with
active participation in the political process. Lack of political participation implies unequal political
influence. Those who are poorer and less educated tend not to take part in politics, and do not have
much influence. In "subject" political cultures, most people passively support the ruling elite, and identify
more with an authoritarian regime. In democracies, by contrast, the citizens control the political elite, and
the elite tries to anticipate the possible consequences of the citizens' actions.
An important foundation of democratic vitality is the confidence that citizens have in their ability to
influence the political elite. Almond and Verba called this "subjective competence"; it is also often termed
"political efficacy." The more citizens believe that their participation can have some effect, the more likely
they will be to take part in public affairs and hold elites accountable.
People may feel that they have little influence over political decisions, either because they lack
confidence in their own political capacities ("internal effectiveness") or because the political elite fails to
respond to citizens' desires ("external effectiveness"). 8
The data in Table 2 show that in Latin America the subject culture [End Page 130] overshadows the
citizen culture. Except for the impact of the vote, Latin Americans are relatively unlikely to think that they
can influence the outcome of events by becoming involved in the political process. Most people do not
say what they really think about politics; many believe that the political tendency which they support has
less opportunity than others to gain power (internal effectiveness). Finally, many believe that politicians
are not offering solutions to the country's problems (external effectiveness).
None of this is surprising, and all of it is consistent with the metaphors of the loaded dice and the smiling
mask. At no time has Latin America had grassroots movements that could channel the participation of
most of the populace; the dice have never been loaded [End Page 131] with that outcome. It could be
said that the data in Table 2 point to a rather gray future for democracy and stability.

Perceptions of Democracy
Building on this rather unpromising foundation of negative civic attitudes, how has democracy nonetheless
been able to produce the collective positive trend in trust in some institutions that we have observed?
Regarding Latin American perceptions of democratic legitimacy and expressed levels of satisfaction with
democracy, we note the greater relevance of differences among countries. The history of a country, and
especially the sequence and contours of its democratic-transition process, will have an important effect
on how it scores on various indicators of democracy. Since we are dealing with only one data point in
time (i.e., the 1996 survey responses), we must take care to avoid drawing conclusions without
considering each country's unique history and situation. We have no trend data for the region.
Again we have chosen four items: support for democracy, satisfaction with democracy, the willingness to
defend democracy against a threat to its survival, and the perception of whether more has to be done to
attain a full democracy (Table 3).
The first item, designed to detect support for a democratic system as such, asks respondents to say
which of three statements they agree with the most: the first statement says, "Democracy is preferable
to any other kind of government"; the second statement opines that authoritarianism might be preferable
to democracy in certain situations; and the third statement professes indifference on the question of
whether the government is democratic or nondemocratic. As measured by respondents' choice of the
first statement, support for democracy is highest in Costa Rica, Uruguay, Panama, and Argentina, where
it ranges from 80 down to 71 percent. By comparison, the figure for Spain today (some two decades
after the death of Francisco Franco and the subsequent transition to democracy) is 81 percent. In
Portugal and Greece, the other two Southern European countries that inaugurated the "third wave" of
democratization, the current levels of support for democracy are 61 and 87 percent, respectively. All
three Southern European countries are considered successfully consolidated democracies. 9
In the remaining 13 Latin American countries surveyed, support for democracy runs between 50 percent
and 70 percent, except for Honduras, where it stands at only 42 percent. Support for authoritarianism is
very low--only 16 percent on average. The highest preference for authoritarianism--23 percent--is found

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in Chile and Ecuador. In Portugal and Greece, the comparable figures are 9 and 5 percent, respectively.
This support for democracy provides a solid basis of legitimacy for [End Page 132] the system as such.
10
Chile and Ecuador alone appear to be experiencing a modest "authoritarian lag." In the case of Chile
this is not surprising, for the former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, retains a large measure of
power and a presence in daily political life as commander in chief of the army. His core supporters
account for most of the support that authoritarianism receives. Significantly, this support has remained
stagnant as the consolidation process has proceeded. What has grown in Chile is the proportion of
citizens who profess themselves "indifferent" to the type of regime that governs their country. This
indifference is indeed a problem for democracy, but it does not represent a threat of recrudescent
authoritarianism. [End Page 133]
Support for the democratic system as such does not mean that people are satisfied with how democracy
actually works. In fact, depending on the country, the level of satisfaction with democracy's functioning
can lag anywhere from 24 to 50 percentage points behind the level of support for democracy as a
regime. The actual levels of satisfaction range from 57 percent in Spain down to an abysmal 11 percent
in Mexico. In only two Latin American countries (Costa Rica and Uruguay) did more than half the
respondents express satisfaction with the performance of their democracy. In Western Europe between
1976 and 1991, the level of satisfaction with democracy was between 50 and 60 percent, with no
downward trend. 11 Thus while Latin America displays levels of support for democracy similar to those
found in established democracies, its satisfaction levels are substantially lower.
As we have seen, Costa Rica and Uruguay are by any indicator easily Latin America's most democratic
countries. It would be wrong, however, to take their examples as proof that other countries can and
should follow in their path, for a look at their respective traits and histories shows that both countries
have long benefited from a different loading of the dice.
The gap between "support for" and "satisfaction with" democracy is not merely a byproduct of
unsatisfied economic expectations. It also correlates highly with the belief that "there are still things to be
done for there to be a full democracy." Thus democratic satisfaction does not correlate positively with
economic growth in Chile, where only 27 percent of respondents professed themselves satisfied with
democracy in 1996 even though their country had experienced economic growth averaging 7 percent a
year since 1989.
Democracy, as is shown by the high percentage of respondents who believe "there are still things to be
done" before democracy is fully attained, is not being blamed for unfulfilled expectations. Blame focuses
instead on authoritarian "holdovers"--lingering personnel and institutions imposed by the Pinochet regime
as the price of its exit from power. Also, people believe that unelected political actors have more power
than elected ones. This disinclination to blame democracy is healthy for the system, which is more stable
when satisfaction with the performance of any particular administration (efficacy) does not affect support
for the system (legitimacy).
In every one of our 17 countries, an impressively high proportion of respondents--ranging from 53
percent in Chile to 85 percent in Costa Rica--express a willingness to defend democracy should it be
placed at risk. It has been argued that respondents might have interpreted this question as referring to a
defense of their country--and not necessarily "democracy"--against a foreign threat. One might also
conclude, however, that even those who in other indicators express a preference for some other sort of
regime are benefiting from the current situation [End Page 134] in their country and therefore, even if not
altogether satisfied, might well be willing to defend it.
The fourth item asks whether people think that democracy is fully established or whether there are still
things to be done. For comparison, we may look again at Spain, where almost 22 years after Franco's
death only 29 percent of respondents think that democracy is fully established. In Latin America, the
comparable figure runs from 4 percent in Brazil to 34 percent in Uruguay.
By averaging the positive results from the first three of these items, we can rank each country on a
"degree of democracy" scale. By this method of measurement, Costa Rica is the most democratic
country in Latin America, followed closely by Uruguay; Argentina and Panama are tied in a somewhat
distant third place.
In the last three places at the bottom of the scale lie Chile, Mexico, and Guatemala, in that order. The
latter two have serious gaps in their democratic systems; their low ranking is not surprising. This is not
so for Chile, where only 54 percent prefer democracy, only 27 percent are satisfied with it, only 53

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percent are ready to defend it in a crisis, and only 10 percent think it fully established. Along many
variables, the Chilean case presents a series of exceptions. Chileans perceive power to be in the hands
of unelected actors (large entrepreneurs, the military). Disenchantment with politics rose from 20 to 45
percent within 18 months after the restoration of democracy in 1990, and has increased steadily since
then, albeit at a more moderate pace. Furthermore, a large majority of citizens perceive the existence of
authoritarian institutional holdovers, and can identify particular examples, such as the continued presence
of appointed senators. 12 Finally, General Pinochet's continued presence at the head of the military seven
years after the inauguration of a democratically elected civilian president stands as a vivid reminder of
the strength retained by undemocratic elements in the Chilean polity.
Faced with this situation, Chileans are expressing their frustration by adopting an attitude of skepticism
about the system. They are doing so, moreover, against a background of robust economic growth:
clearly, the relative lack of political "goods" is overshadowing the relative abundance of economic goods
in this particular consolidation process. Yet despite all this, no one can say that Chilean democracy
currently faces any grave threat.
Frustration and skepticism have not hindered the consolidation process, although they have driven
expectations up and performance indicators down. The demand for political "goods" has not been met
[End Page 135] because the consolidation process has focused on economic development, which at the
time of democratic restoration was the only national goal that could command a consensus. The lack of
political development--visible in Congress, in the party system, and in the difficulties of elite formation-represents another weakness.
The last, but by no means least important, factor working on the side of the fledgling democracies is the
failure of their authoritarian predecessors--including military regimes--to have solved national problems.
Not even in Chile, where the military regime introduced successful economic reforms, was this the case.
As the Pinochet dictatorship came to an end in 1988-89, inflation remained at 25 percent, unemployment
was high, and 5 million Chileans (out of a population of around 13 million) were reported to be living
below the official poverty line. Military rule is no longer seen as an alternative that can solve problems.
Democracy today faces other challenges, such as terrorism, drug trafficking, and political
disenchantment, but none of these is likely to provoke a knock on the barracks door.
If we turn to what democracy has accomplished in spite of problematic civic and social traits, we find
surprisingly strong levels of legitimacy, support, and positive expectations. Democracy has its own
smiling mask, using silence and appearances as its most potent weapons each time it needs to
13
dissimulate in order to survive.
In other words, all the negative aspects of the current political situation are not to be blamed upon
democracy; these negative features are part of the smiling mask that Latin America has been wearing
for centuries. Democracy, by contrast, is the only thing that citizens agree upon so massively. It is seen
as having a real chance to "redeem" the world; it is not expected to produce a perfect world. Latin
Americans would not dream of attaining a perfect world, but they do expect redemption. In other words,
they know that the mask will remain in place, and that history's dice will continue to be loaded.
The penchant of Latin Americans for seeing democracy as a mask means that they expect it to perform
even though taxes are not paid and traffic laws are not obeyed, and yet they know that they will never
have full democracy unless this changes. The metaphor of the mask expresses that contradiction. Many
Latin American democracies exist more in appearance than in reality, and yet their people are silent.
They do not shout out loud their true opinions, for although they know that real [End Page 136]
democracy is not yet present, they are willing to defend whatever they have already achieved on the
road toward that goal.
The level of stated preference for democracy over any other type of regime is higher than the level of
declared confidence in any other institution, even the Catholic Church; this indicator alone reveals a highly
positive component of democratic stability. Comparisons of Latin American democratic-legitimacy scores
with those from Southern Europe must be viewed in the context of the different trust and confidence
levels that obtain, respectively, in each region.
Although understandably dissatisfied with the present performance of democracy, Latin Americans prefer
it, they have no illusions about the alternatives to it, and they profess themselves ready to defend it.
Insofar as the opinions of most citizens can determine the matter, democracy is there to stay.
Most people in the region think that there are still things to be done for full democracy to be established,

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not only in those countries (like Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico) where formal and objective gaps in
democracy remain, but elsewhere as well. Latin American democracy does not forget that it is wearing a
smiling mask, and that this is but a survival strategy. Latin Americans have learned that by appearing to
be as democratic as possible, and by silently and deliberately taking steps toward true democracy, they
quietly ensure the most favorable prospects for its full establishment.
Held up against the template of Western civic culture and established democracy, Latin America appears
gray and troubled. Held up against the template of the region's past, however, democracy appears as
the only collective idea besides Catholicism to have defied the odds of the cultural loaded dice. From this
vantage point, it can be predicted that every Latin American country, whatever might be its individual
difficulties, will strive mightily to remain at least as democratic as it has been so far. Octavio Paz might
say today that for Latin America, democracy is a goal, a dream, and something that is worth defending
until it has been proven not worth defending. This in turn means that the situation of democracy in Latin
America cannot be correctly assessed unless the importance of the existing culture's nonrational
elements is duly recognized.
Marta Lagos is managing director of Market and Opinion Research International (Chile). In 1987, she
began a nationwide polling operation at the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contempornea in
Santiago. In 1995, she became the founding director of the Latinobarmetro, a yearly survey of public
opinion that covers 17 Latin American countries.

Notes
1. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, trans. Lysander Kemp (New
York: Grove, 1960, orig. publ. 1950), 23-24.
2. Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude, 29.
3. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).
4. The Latinobarmetro is an annual national-sample survey that follows the pattern of the
Eurobarometer, conducted since 1973. The first wave, covering eight countries, came in 1995. The
Latinobarmetro was conducted by the Corporacin Latinobarmetro in Spain and every Latin American
country except Cuba and the Dominican Republic--that is to say, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The total number of interviews--including 2,481 in Spain--was
20,652. Most of the financing came from the European Union through the Centro de Investigacin,
Promocin y Cooperacin Internacional (CIPIE) in Madrid. Other financing came from the United Nations
Development Programme and independent institutions.
5. Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989), 32.
6. Cf. Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1996), 17.
7. Max Weber, Methodologische Schriften (Berlin: Fischer Verlag, 1968), 289.
8. Phillip E. Converse, "Change in the American Electorate," in Angus Campbell and Phillip E. Converse,
eds., The Human Meaning of Social Change (New York: Russell Sage, 1972), 237-337.
9. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern
Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996), 287.
10. Ibid., 226.
11. Max Kaase and Kenneth Newton, eds., Beliefs in Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995), 61.
12. Manuel Antonio Garretn, La posibilidad democrtica en Chile (Santiago: Flacso, Cuaderno de

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Difusin, 1989). A four-year cross-sectional survey from the early 1990s shows that Chileans are well
aware of the elements that make up the "authoritarian legacy" in their country. See Manuel Antonio
Garretn, Marta Lagos, and Roberto Mndez, Los Chilenos y la democracia: La opinin pblica,
1991-1994. Informe 1994 y sntesis del estudio (Santiago: Ediciones Participa, 1996).
13. Other data from the same survey, which are omitted for lack of space, show that people's
expectations for their children are highly positive.

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Journal of Democracy 8.3 (1997) 128

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Latin America's Smiling Mask

Marta Lagos
Public Opinion in New Democracies

Table 1
Social Attitudes

Country
Uruguay
Argentina
Colombia
Paraguay
Mexico
Ecuador
Chile
Bolivia
Peru
Brazil
Venezuela

Interpersonal

Lack of

Trusta
33
23
23
23
21
20
18
17
13
11
11

Honestyb
33
59
61
41
64
58
65
72
85
62
57

Lawbreakingc
50
82
68
63
72
77
66
79
88
87
74

Source: 1996 Latinobarmetro.

a

Percentage of respondents who answered "can trust most people" to the question,
"Generally speaking, would you say that you can trust most people or that you can never
be too careful when dealing with others?"
b
Percentage of respondents who answered either "a little" or "not at all" to the question,
"Do you think that the [nationals] are very, quite, a little, or not at all . . . honest?"
c
Percentage of respondents who answered either "a little" or "not at all" to the question,
"Do you think that the [nationals] are very, quite, a little, or not at all . . . law-abiding?"
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Journal of Democracy 8.3 (1997) 131

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Latin America's Smiling Mask

Marta Lagos
Public Opinion in New Democracies

Table 2
Attitudes Toward Politics

Country
Paraguay
Nicaragua
Uruguay
Spain
Argentina
Brazil
Panama
Ecuador
Peru
Bolivia
Venezuela
Chile
Mexico
Costa Rica
Colombia
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras

Efficacy of

Openness

Equality of

Efficacy of

Votinga
70
69
67
67
63
61
59
58
52
51
49
49
46
45
43
42
38
37

About Politicsb
24
42
34
33
38
35
41
27
31
34
32
29
32
33
41
25
21
25

Political Opportunityc
60
42
73
42
38
44
55
30
54
35
42
31
59
39
29
21
32

Politiciansd
9
41
10
19
6
6
6
40
8
11
9
12
10
16
6
16
17
19

Source: 1996 Latinobarmetro.

a

Percentage of respondents who agreed with the statement, "The way you vote can

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change the way things will be in the future," rather than "No matter how you vote, things will
not improve in the future."
b
Percentage of respondents who answered "most people say what they think" to the
question, "When people are asked to express their political opinion, do you think that most
people say what they really think, or that most people do not say what they really think?"
c
Percentage of respondents who answered "same opportunity as others" to the question,
"Do you think that the political tendency you support has the same opportunity as others to
get into power, or that it does not have the same opportunity?"
d
Percentage of respondents who answered "a lot" or "quite a lot" to the question, "As
things are today, would you say that the politicians are offering a lot, quite a lot, a few, or
no solutions to the problems of the country?"
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[Table 1][Table 2][Table 3]

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Marta Lagos - Table 3: Perceptions of Democracy, in Latin America's S...

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Copyright 1997 National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University
Press. All rights reserved.

Journal of Democracy 8.3 (1997) 133

Access provided by Universidad Pompeu Fabra

Latin America's Smiling Mask

Marta Lagos
Public Opinion in New Democracies

Table 3
Perceptions of Democracy

Country
Costa Rica
Spain
Uruguay
Argentina
Panama
Bolivia
Ecuador
Peru
Venezuela
Nicaragua
Colombia
El Salvador
Honduras
Paraguay
Brazil
Chile
Mexico
Guatemala

Support
for
Democracya
80
81
80
71
75
64
52
63
62
59
60
56
42
59
50
54
53
51

Satisfaction
with
Democracyb
51
57
52
34
28
25
34
28
30
23
16
26
20
22
20
27
11
16

Defense
of
Democracyc
85
76
78
73
75
84
80
75
74
72
74
60
80
59
69
53
66
56

Index of
Democratic
Perceptionsd
72.0
71.3
70.0
59.3
59.3
57.7
55.3
55.3
55.3
51.3
50.0
47.3
47.3
46.7
46.3
44.7
43.3
41.0

Perception
of Full
Democracye
23
29
34
12
13
13
20
14
16
7
7
10
13
9
4
10
10
6

Source: 1996 Latinobarmetro.

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Percentage of respondents who agreed with the statement, "Democracy is preferable to

any other kind of government."
b
Percentage of respondents who answered "very satisfied" or "fairly satisfied" to the
question, "In general, would you say that you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very
satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in [nation]?"
c
Percentage of respondents who answered "yes" to the question, "Would you be willing to
defend democracy if it was under threat?"
d
Average of percentages in the first three columns.
e
Percentage of respondents who answered "fully established" to the question, "Do you
think that democracy is fully established in [nation], or do you think that . . . there are still
things to be done for there to be a full democracy?"
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[Table 1][Table 2][Table 3]

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