Delegative Democracy and Confidence in Legislatures: Explaining Institutional Authority and Trust in

Abstract

In this paper, we explore micro-level explanations for the phenomena of “delegative democracy” in Latin America—hitherto examined only at the macro-political level. We test the impact of a variety of country-level and individual-level variables on citizens’ propensities to support the delegation of authority to a strong executive and/or to technocrats. We also analyze the impact of these variables on seemingly related phenomenon: levels of citizen confidence in the legislative branch of government. In doing so, we explore the cross-national applicability of theories of support for democracy and trust in institutions—models developed primarily in the US and European contexts. We also discover that the underlying structures of these two phenomena, delegative attitudes and trust in legislatures, are only partially related to one another.