Los invitamos a participar del próximo coloquio ISUC de junio el que se realizará el próximo 19 de junio a las 13:30 hrs en la Sala de Magíster del Instituto de Sociología.
La presentación tendrá por título Citizens’ Commitment to Democracy: Easier Said Than Done? y dará cuenta de la investigación realizada por Loreto Cox coautoreada con Hernán Carvajal y Natalia Gabiras-Díaz.
Does citizens' stated commitment to democracy anticipate their revealed willingness to defend it? We leverage a rare setup to answer this question. In 2022, we conducted a two-wave panel survey in Peru, measuring explicit support for democracy through survey questions and implicit support through votes for undemocratic hypothetical candidates in a conjoint experiment. Later that year, former president Pedro Castillo unexpectedly (and unsuccessfully) attempted to shut down Congress, and we conducted a third wave among the same panelists. This setup allows us to explore citizen responses to this undemocratic move and, crucially, whether stated commitment to democracy can predict such responses. We document four main findings. First, Peruvians do not unanimously condemn Castillo’s self-coup, and, unsurprisingly, his voters are more indulgent of this move. Second, they adjust their stated democratic standards from before the self-coup, no longer deeming shutting down Congress as undemocratic. Third, our differences-in-differences analysis shows that Castillo voters further shy away from democratic endorsement and satisfaction after his self-coup. Fourth, lasso and standard regressions reveal that responses to explicit survey questions about democratic values are the strongest predictors of condemning Castillo's undemocratic attempt, as predictive as having voted for Castillo. The implicit measure from our conjoint also predicts such condemnation, though very weakly. We contribute to explaining and anticipating citizens’ commitment to democracy when the time comes---a commitment that can, perhaps surprisingly, be captured quite well through simple direct survey measures.
Loreto Cox obtuvo su PhD en ciencia política en el MIT. Es ingeniera comercial con mención en economía y socióloga de la UC. Sus principales focos de investigación son el comportamiento político, con especial interés en opinión pública y en el funcionamiento de las instituciones políticas chilenas, y la educación superior. Su trabajo utiliza diversos métodos empíricos, incluyendo encuestas y experimentos. Desde 2020 es columnista de El Mercurio.