Do political instability and political violence affect attitudes to state surveillance? A comparison between post-communist and Latin American countries using Wave 7 of the WVS

• In Event: Attitude towards Crime and Punishment

Abstract

A relatively small, but growing, body of work exists that looks at what people think about the role of state surveillance. Our previous research on attitudes to state surveillance started to address this gap. In order to explore whether a past legacy of intrusive state surveillance could explain present-day differences in attitudes to it, we compared post-communist countries and established democracies in Europe. We found remarkable similarities across the two groups of countries in terms of underlying reasons for support of mass surveillance. To further advance our research, we use data from the World Values Survey (Wave 7 – 2017-2020) to compare countries from post-communist Europe and Latin America. The comparison between these two groups of transitional countries with comparable experiences of extensive surveillance of political dissent, allows us to assess potential patterns of difference across these geographic regions, relating to public attitudes to political violence and state surveillance. No studies to date have explored linkages between political violence and state surveillance; thus, our paper will offer a significant contribution to our growing understanding of how attitudes to surveillance emerge cross-nationally on a comparative basis.

Authors

• Francesca Menichelli, University of Surrey

• Daniel McCarthy, University of Surrey