The "Fourth Estate" and Diffuse Trust Across the Americas, 2000-2018

• In Event: Does Popular Support for Democracy Matter?

Abstract

After decades of scholarship on democratic consolidation, scholars have turned their focus to the growing number of illiberal regimes across the world and the apparent weakening of democratic norms and practices across the world (see Stefan Foa and Mounck 2016). The extant literature on established democracies points to the importance of “diffuse trust” in supporting democratic institutions and practices. This study explores levels of diffuse support for democratic institutions across Latin America, a region that has experimented with the creation of novel institutions of “horizontal accountability” (see O’Donnell 1994) as a means to shore up trust in democratic governance. This study then examines whether changes in diffuse trust over time in the region can be explained by societal, economic, or demographic factors. Further, this study explores the link between the press, or the “fourth estate”, in shaping perceptions that government institutions are trustworthy using a mixture of public opinion data (Latinbarometer) and aggregate indices of institutional strength in a multilevel, quantitative model from 2000-2018. This study builds on an established literature in developed democracies, and applies it to a region that is considered broadly democratic with a number of cases of backsliding in the last decade. Further, this study sheds light on an often-ignored element, the "fourth estate", in impacting the way citizens assign trust to governing institutions, new and old. Finally, this study is particularly relevent today, as declining trust in democratic institutions has spurred concerns about the sustainability of democratic governance across the world. By shedding light on the factors that produce diffuse trust this study can provide a deeper understanding of the factors that may shore up democratic governance in the short and medium term.

Author

• Erika Moreno, Creighton University