Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Impact of Authoritarian Rule on Chilean Political Culture

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Does political structure affect political culture? To be more specific, does a long period of authoritarian rule transform the attitudes, orientations and feelings citizens have about their political system, in particular their support of its constituent units? What are the factors that can explain variations in mass system support, and is their relative predictive power the same in both the periods? What can comparisons between the political cultures of newly democratizing nations tell us about the impact of authoritarianism and about the consolidation of democracy. This Doctoral Dissertation Research Support project examines the evolution of mass political attitudes, in particular system support, in Chile for the periods leading up to, and following, 16 years of authoritarian rule (1973-1989). The Chilean political system presents an ideal case for studying the link between political regime and political culture because of its generalizability and because the data are available. Longitudinal and cross-sectional comparisons are possible because of the presence of an extraordinary collection of survey data, particularly those from Chile, archived at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. The data also include cross-national surveys carried out in the post-authoritarian period: the Latinobarometro surveys 1996, 1997; the World Values Survey 1990, 1995; and the 1998 Hewlett Survey. These measure citizens' opinions on a broad spectrum of social, economic and political subjects. This projects uses the available data to test, across regimes, a wide-range of hypotheses that focus on factors such as ideology, party identification, trust, participation, live satisfaction, economic conditions, class and religion to explain variations in mass support for democracy.