Opinião Pública – Vol. 11, Nº 1 2005
Articles in this issue
Author: Pippa Norris
The rise of the radical right is open to multiple interpretations. The question addressed in this paper is whether many of these parties have fostered an enduring social base among core voters and, if so, which social sectors are most likely to support them. The first part discusses the alternative theoretical frameworks provided by the classic accounts of the 1950s and 1960s, the “new social cleavage” thesis common during the last decade, and the theory of partisan dealignment. Then, it compares evidence to analyze rival hypotheses about the social basis of the radical right vote across fifteen nations, using data drawn from the European Social Survey, 2002, and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001. The second part focuses upon the role of socioeconomic indicators, while the third part considers the enduring gender gap and patterns of generational support. The conclusion considers the implications of these results for understanding the basis of radical right popularity, and for the stability and longevity of these parties.
Author: José Álvaro Moisés
Several studies show that brazilians support the democratic regime per se, but, at the same time, reveal a widespread and persistent mistrust of democratic institutions. The author begins presenting the foundations of the contradictory coexistence of both phenomena and after that he reviews the treatment given by literature on political trust and the factors related to it (as political legitimacy and economic performance of governments), pointing limits. He also proposes that trust in institutions is rooted on the evaluation citizens make, based on their experience, about the way institutions perform the mission for which they were created.
Authors: Timothy J. Power e Giselle D. Jamison
This paper reviews the context, causes, and consequences of mistrust of politicians in Latin America’s current democratic era. In terms of context, we demonstrate that the very low trust in politicians in Latin America is merely one aspect of a syndrome of low trust across the board. In terms of causes of mistrust, we review three prominent features of democratic development over the past 15 years: poor economic performance affecting most new democracies in the region, corruption scandals, and the instrumental use of political institutions by incumbents. In terms of consequences, we examine the weak and uneven support for democracy across the region that appears to be causally related to mistrust of politicians. However, we avoid alarmism by arguing that these findings must be contextualized in light of the multidimensional low-trust syndrome of Latin America discussed above. Moreover, the reservoir of authoritarian attitudes is fragmentary and is rarely expressed coherently in political action. And finally, research on both advanced and emerging democracries has recently demonstrated that citizens are increasingly willing to separate their evaluations of incumbents (often negative) from their evaluation of democracy as a regume type.
Authors: Marcelo Baquero, Aaron Schneider, Bianca Linhares, Douglas Santos Alves e Thiago Ingrassia Pereira
In spite of the growing interest about alternative forms of political participation, among which the participatory budget (OP), we know little about how this form of involvement is affecting the structuring of a more efficient social contract. Such situation, perhaps, is due to the fact that the payment of taxes is considered a legal obligation; therefore, the argument is that there would be little to be studied on this field. This article argues that how citizens position themselves about the payment of taxes influences other domains of politics, such as institutional trust and levels of political involvement. Through a survey with porto-alegrenses, the results indicate that the existence of a negative structural dimension insofar as payment of taxes is concerned undermines the actual social contract.
Author: Valia Pereira Almao
This article analyses the democratic preference and its consistency among the attitudes of Venezuelans between 1995 and 2000. Data come from national survey research data, and the historical trends of democratic attitudes are analysed based on sociodemographic, political and ideological aspects. The consistency of democratic attitudes is analysed based on the support to military regimes and strong leadership, and also based on party preference. One observes incongruences among the high levels of democratic support and those variables, what suggests a predisposition to authoritarian support.
Author: Julian Borba
This article analyses the interrelations between the concepts of political culture, ideology and voting behavior, in an attempt to understand the so-called “Brazilian voter”. It defines the concepts of political culture and ideology, and presents the principal theories of electoral behavior and the typologies of the vote in Brazil. It concludes by giving a typology of the Brazilian voter, who is defined as personalist-oriented, deciding his vote principally on this basis of the individual attributes, competence and honesty of the candidates. Finally, it seeks to explain the historical origin of this behavioral pattern among voters.
Author: Renata Menasche
This paper analyzes the work done by media in the making of social representations upon the growing of genetically-modified (GM) crops and food in Rio Grande do Sul, showing its role in the increase of political polarization on this issue in the state. In order to demonstrate this, two events in the towns of Cachoeirinha and Não-Me-Toque are considered. The type of coverage given by the media to these events is apprehended to enable the observation of the local media role in the building of social representations concerning GM organisms.
Author: Gláucio Ary Dillon Soares
Crime, violence and homicide are strongly related to political factors, as we can see by the high incidence of police and state violence in dictatorships and totalitarisms or by the role of policy and democratic civil society in reduce them. Using regimes as variables is a fundamental step to understand the evolution of rates of violent deaths or by outside causes in countries that passed through political regime changes as in Eastern Europe and the former soviet bloc. In Latin America, there was no similar picture of extreme social dissolution but, nevertheless, had experienced a significative difference in homicide rates before and after political transitions. Data on Brazil show the tendence of growth of such rates in the military regime and of stability in the post-democratic transition period, what collides with the vision of thinking that occurs the opposite phenomenom, a kind of “wave of violence” following the end of the military dictatorship.