In 2006, Costa Ricans showed the lowest support for democracy in 20 years. This goes hand in hand with their distrust in public institutions and intolerance levels similar to those found in Mexico and the rest of Central America.
The Latin American Public Opinion Project released a comparative study in San José, titled La Cultura Política de la Democracia en Costa Rica: 2006. The report finds that Costa Ricans remain unwilling to support an authoritarian leader, even if there is decreasing support for the country’s democratic system and increasing citizen distrust. Yet, electoral abstention has continued to increase due to a growing and strong tendency to disassociate from traditional political parties.
Corruption seems to be the main cause of low support for and mistrust in the political system. The data indicates that personal victimization by corruption increased from 14 percent in the 2004 survey to 19 percent in 2006. On the other hand, only 45 percent of those interviewed preferred honest inefficient to dishonest efficient politicians, suggesting that a large part of the population is willing to tolerate corrupt politicians as long as they can get things done.
“The corruption issue is relevant due to the destructive effect of corruption scandals on the political system,” write Jorge Vargas-Cullell and Luis Rosero-Bixby of the Centro Centroamericano de Población at Universidad de Costa Rica. The study is based on a poll carried out among 1,500 adults in June 2006; months after Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias had been elected president.
It follows up on a similar study from 2004 and 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 (USAID) and the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University.
The sense of being unsafe appears to feed citizen distrust. Nearly half of Costa Ricans feel unsafe in their own country. At the same time, levels of trust in the legal system fell, due to the fact that people believe neither the judiciary nor the police will punish criminals.
Overall, Costa Ricans are increasingly skeptical of decentralization and doubt the efficiency, transparency and sense of the local governments.
The survey data also shows that the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has low levels of citizen support. Vargas-Cullell and Rosero-Bixby found an explanation for this in Costa Ricans’ increasing sense that their government has no effective methods to fight poverty and corruption and does not protect citizens’ rights.
The publication and data are free to the public and can be obtained at www.lapopsurveys.org.
The surveys are directed by Mitchell A. Seligson, Centennial Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. They cover 21 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America, including all in Central America.
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
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu