Curbing corruption and violence and opening up government meetings and financial information to public scrutiny are keys to promoting democracy in Honduras, where support for a democratic government has increased.
A comparative study by the Latin American Public Opinion Project released May 15 and 16 in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, respectively, also showed that Hondurans’ confidence in public institutions has decreased and that the number of people favoring some sort of authoritarianism to maintain stability has increased.
Hondurans lack confidence in how local governments administer public funds, and so are reluctant to pay higher taxes for more services, the study found. Yet, there is a relatively high level of citizen participation in community committees and assemblies. Furthermore, compared to the rest of Latin America, there is a tendency toward higher individual involvement in attempts to solve community problems.
“Among the many ways to try to convince Hondurans that decentralization is indeed desirable, open councils and financial reports seem to be the most promising steps and should be promoted,” writes José Miguel Cruz, director of the Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública at the Universidad Centroamericana based in El Salvador, and José Rene Argueta, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, in the report titled Cultura Política de la Democracia en Honduras: 2006.
The poll on which the report is based was carried out in 2006 among 1,585 Honduran adults. The survey consisted of more than 200 questions exploring a host of subjects.
The study is part of a series of surveys by LAPOP’s AmericasBarometer, an effort to measure democratic values and behaviors in the Americas using national probability samples of voting-age adults. The surveys are made possible with funding from the United States Agency for International Development and the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University.
The surveys are directed by Mitchell A. Seligson, Centennial Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. They cover 19 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America, including all in Central America.
Perceptions that democracy is ineffective in solving economic and security problems in Honduras reflect low levels of support for political parties, say Cruz and Argueta. The data shows that such support has decreased drastically in the past five years, especially in San Pedro Sula, where it is among the lowest. This decrease has influenced the voting-age population, leading to lower levels of confidence in elections and in voter registration, as well as to higher levels of electoral non-participation or invalid or blank votes.
Similarly crime victimization levels have increased in Honduras in the past two years, which places Honduras among those in the region with the highest numbers of crime victims. Urban populations are most vulnerable, especially people who live in neighborhoods dominated by drug traffickers, gangs and corrupt police officers. One of the clearest findings in the study is that the majority of crime victims do not report criminal acts because they are convinced that this will not help solve or prevent them. The majority of citizens do not believe that the legal system will punish criminals.
Relatedly, Honduras’ perception of corruption is relatively high among citizens. More than half of those surveyed see corruption as a broad problem and believe that the government does little or nothing to fight it. This perception has become even more widespread during the last two years. The majority of those who were victims of corruption reported that the police, the municipalities and the judiciary are the main sources of bribery. This, in turn, has produced a lack of trust in the efficiency and fairness of state actions, which adversely affects Hondurans’ support of their political system.
The publication and data are free to the public and can be obtained at www.lapopsurveys.org.
LAPOP, a project group in the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University, was founded in the 1970s by Seligson to conduct scientific surveys of Latin American citizens about their opinions and behaviors related to building and strengthening democracies. AmericasBarometer now covers nearly the entire Western Hemisphere.
For more information, contact the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University, www.vanderbilt.edu/americas or (615) 343-2818.
Media Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, (615) 322-NEWS
ann.marie.d.owens@vanderbilt.edu