Democracy challenged: youth perception of political system in South America
(2019) , 18 pages
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- Abstract
- Last elections in South America showed that political parties with neoliberal agenda are still a strong force in the region. However, it is also clear that citizens’ political behavior has started to change since the recovered democracy. The low engagement of youth in more institutional forms of political participation remains a major concern. Is this also a calling into question of democracy as the political system? Surveys show that democratic values are still important in the region but there is a clear critic of democratic performance, particularly among youth. In this respect, the aim of this paper is to analyze the critics that young adults with different levels of political engagement do to democracy in South America. In doing so, one hundred and six interviews with young adults between 18 and 29 years old have been carried out in three South American countries: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. The interviews were focused on three groups of people; citizens engaged in political parties, citizens engaged in social movements and social organizations, and citizens not politically engaged. First results show that it is possible to identify four groups of participants; the ones with high diffuse and specific support of democracy; the ones with high diffuse support and low specific support, who are very critics of the regime performance; those with low diffuse support, more critics of the democratic principles; and those who are more indifferent to the political system. Regarding the legitimization sources of the political system, we conclude that some of them are related to the macro social context but other with microsocials experiences and individual characteristics that seems to be more related to diffuse support. The study of youth speeches let us understand better the challenges currently faced by democratic South American countries.
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Carvallo, C. (2019). Democracy challenged: youth perception of political system in South America. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/95418