Education, democratic governance, and satisfaction with democracy: Multilevel evidence from Latin America
| Author | Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo,Gabriela Cantú Ramos |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120952878 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120952878
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(5) 662 –679
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120952878
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Education, democratic governance,
and satisfaction with democracy:
Multilevel evidence from Latin
America
Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo
El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, México
Gabriela Cantú Ramos
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales-UNAM, México
Abstract
It is usually recognized that satisfaction with democracy is enhanced by clean governments and fair
democratic procedures. However, under certain circumstances, some citizens might appreciate the
quality of democratic governance more than others. Building on research that underlines the accuracy and
norm-inducing functions of education, we argue that the quality of democratic governance conditions the
relationship between education and satisfaction with democracy. Analyzing data from 18 Latin American
countries, we find that higher-educated citizens are less satisfied with the regime than the less-educated.
Among the highly educated, nonetheless, the least satisfied are those who were asked by public officials
to pay bribes. Highly educated individuals are more satisfied with the regime if their country’s quality of
democracy is robust rather than weak. At the lowest level of education, the conditional influence of being
asked for a bribe or the quality of democracy is absent.
Keywords
Satisfaction with democracy, education, corruption victimization, quality of democracy, Latin America
Introduction
A cumulative body of research indicates that citizens confer considerable importance on the quality
of democratic governance. Clean governments and fair democratic procedures tend to enhance
trust in political institutions and satisfaction with democracy. Under certain circumstances, how-
ever, some people might be more satisfied with the quality of democratic governance than others.
Corresponding author:
Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, México. Km 18.5 Escénica Tijuana-Ensenada, S/N,
Tijuana, BC 22560, México.
Email: amonsi@colef.mx
952878IPS0010.1177/0192512120952878International Political Science ReviewGwiazda
research-article2020
Article
Gwiazda 663
Building on research that underlines the normative and accuracy-inducing functions of education,
we argue that the relationship between education and satisfaction with democracy is conditioned
by both the micro and macro attributes of the quality of democratic governance.
Education is widely recognized as a predictor of political trust and satisfaction with democracy
(e.g., Anderson and Tverdova, 2003; Criado and Herreros, 2007; Huang et al., 2008). While most
studies assume that the influence of education is direct and unconditioned, recent research suggests
that the influence of education on political support is modified by the quality of political institu-
tions (Agerberg, 2019; Hakhverdian and Mayne, 2012). According to this view, increasing levels
of education provide cognitive abilities and political knowledge that enable citizens not only to
evaluate more accurately the performance of the political regime but also to assess the quality of
institutions according to political norms and values. As a consequence, higher-educated individu-
als should judge their political system more favorably if the quality of democracy is robust, and
more unfavorably if its democratic features are feeble.
In this study, we test the conditional influence of the quality of democratic governance on the
relationship between education and satisfaction with democracy. Research examining how the
quality of democratic governance modifies the relationship between education and satisfaction
with democracy is still scarce. We contribute to this literature, arguing that both micro and macro-
level attributes of the quality of democratic governance condition the influence of education on
citizens’ satisfaction with the regime’s performance. We expect that experiences of corruption
victimization will affect the level of satisfaction with democracy at the higher levels of education
negatively. If corruption victimization represents a negative indicator of the quality of democratic
governance, its impact should affect highly educated individuals the most. At the same time, we
expect that the quality of democratic governance at the country level should move the influence of
education on satisfaction with democracy in a positive direction. Regardless of how dissatisfied
citizens are, education will augment or reduce the amount of dissatisfaction depending on the
actual quality of democracy. Furthermore, if education enhances people’s ability to recognize the
democratic significance of corruption, we expect that experiences of corruption victimization will
shift the effect of education downwards again, particularly among the highly educated living in
robust democracies where corruption is supposedly atypical.
We test our expectations by analyzing survey data from 18 Latin American countries in a mul-
tilevel framework. Analyzing data from Latin American countries not only serves the purpose of
testing the conditional relationship between democratic governance and educational attainment on
a set of new democracies that exhibit a significant variation in the quality of democratic govern-
ance (Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán, 2015), it also helps to understand how the interaction of micro
and macro-level attributes shape satisfaction with democracy in a region where political discontent
is deep and widespread. In this context, we expect to assess how much dissatisfaction with Latin
American democracies changes as a result of diverging educational attainments and the varying
degrees of democratic quality in the region.
Satisfaction with democracy: Theoretical background
Contemporary democracies around the world ground their legitimacy on the claim that elected
authorities rule on behalf of the people. A vast amount of comparative research on system support
suggests that citizens take this claim seriously, judging democracies on the basis of their perfor-
mance (e.g., Norris, 2011). In this regard, a crucial indicator of the public’s performance-based
assessments of the political system is their satisfaction with democracy (Linde and Ekman, 2003).
Citizens need not fully endorse democracy as their preferred form of government and still be con-
tent with the regime’s performance. Likewise, some people might express dismay at how their
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