Jonathan Hartlyn

Performance Still Matters: Explaining Trust in Government in the Dominican Republic

What explains low levels of trust in government institutions in democratizing Latin American countries? The authors examine this question in the Dominican Republic, employing data from three surveys conducted over 1994 to 2001. Their analysis finds that trust in government institutions is shaped primarily by perceptions of economic and political performance by government. There is little evidence of a relationship between civic engagement and institutional trust, and no relationship between democratic values and institutional trust. They find a curvilinear effect between socioeconomic status and institutional trust, with middle-sector groups significantly less trusting of government institutions than either the poor or the wealthy. Age has a nonlinear effect as older generations, who experienced authoritarianism as children, are considerably more trusting of democratic institutions, contradicting predictions by culturalist early-life socialization arguments. The authors conclude that low trust per se is not the major challenge for governance.

Electoral Governance Matters: Explaining the Quality of Elections in Contemporary Latin America

This article provides a systematic cross-national analysis of the role of electoral administration in explaining acceptable democratic presidential elections in 19 countries in Latin America since the year 1980 or the first pivotal, transitional election. The authors provide two alternative measures of election administration, one focused on the degree of partisanship or professional independence and another on formal—legal institutional independence, as well as on other key factors, to test partial proportional odds-ordered logit models predicting the probability of an acceptable, flawed, or failed electoral process. The results show an important positive role for professional, independent electoral commissions on electoral outcomes in Latin America, controlling for other socioeconomic and political factors; formal-legal independence matters when the rules of the game are likely to be respected. In addition, low-quality elections are found disproportionately where incumbents seek reelection and where victory margins are extremely wide rather than narrow.

Trust in government institutions: The effects of performance and participation in the Dominican Republic and Haiti

This article analyzes theories of institutional trust in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two developing countries that have shared some historical legacies but currently manifest divergent economic and political trajectories. The evidence confirms that conventional theories emphasizing participation and government performance help us understand institutional trust in both countries. In addition, the analysis emphasizes the analytical leverage gained by exploring the extent to which different facets of engagement have divergent effects on institutional trust. The findings build upon previous research to underscore the importance of considering how context shapes the precise ways in which performance and engagement influence institutional trust, particularly when analyzing the developing world.

Diferenças de gênero na República Dominicana, 1994-2004: dois passos à frente, um passo para trás?

The slowly changing nature of the gender gap responds both to significant social changes, such as urbanization, education, the entry of women into the labor force, and democratization, as well as to concerted efforts by social movements and political leaders to broaden women’s right. These factors have clearly played an important role in the Dominican Republic over this past decade, impacting the country’s gender gap. We assess the nature and evolution of the Dominican Republic’s gender gap over the 1994-2004 period employing data taken from four nationwide public opinion surveys in the Dominican Republic – the Demos surveys – conducted in 1994, 1997, 2001, and 2004. The analysis of these surveys indicates that elements of what has been termed a traditional gender gap remain in place in the country with regard to civic engagement, political interest, and attitudes toward democracy. At the same time, this gap disappeared with regard to voter participation in elections and a modern gender gap emerged for the first time with regard to attitudes about the role of women in politics. Age and education have consistent and substantial differential effects across the attitudinal profiles of Dominican men and women over this time period.

Public support for Latin American presidents: The cyclical model in comparative perspective

What characterizes the dynamics of presidential popularity? Research based on the United States of America finds popularity exhibits an almost law-like cyclicality over a president’s term: high post-election “honeymoon” approval rates deteriorate before experiencing an end-of-term boost as new elections approach. We contend that cyclical approval dynamics are not specific to the USA, but rather characteristic of presidential systems more generally, despite heterogeneity in their socio-economic and political contexts. Testing this proposition requires overcoming a key empirical problem: lack of comparable data. We do so by employing time-series inputs from 324 opinion surveys from a new publicly available database—the Executive Approval Database 1.0—to craft quarterly measures of popularity across 18 Latin American contemporary presidential democracies. Our analysis strongly confirms the cyclical approval model for the region. The conclusion identifies avenues for future research on the relationships across approval, presidentialism, and electoral, institutional, and socio-economic factors afforded by the new data resource we present here.

Latin American Democracy in "Post-Consolidation" Literature: Optimism and Pessimism@@@Fault Lines of Democracy in Post-Transition Latin America@@@Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America@@@Political Learning and Redemocratization in Latin America: Do Politicians Learn from Political Crises?@@@Deepening Democracy in Latin America@@@What Kind of Democracy? What Kind of Market? Latin America in the Age of Neoliberalism

Intrigued with the question of how societies adopt norms, institutions, and rules associated with liberal democracy, the contributors to this volume examine how political actors in Latin America reorient their behaviour and attitudes to support, adapt, or acquiesce to democracy.