How could a polity with a fairly good policy performance face acute problems of legitimacy while another polity with critical governance flaws achieves high levels of regime support? In this book, Mathew Rhodes-Purdy does great work to show that this apparent paradox is – under close scrutiny – not in fact a paradox. He argues that policy performance theories cannot fully explain the variation observed in regard to regime support in democracies because these theories do not include proper evaluation of participatory institutions, which are also relevant for regime support. These institutions foster perceptions of what he calls ‘citizens’ autonomy’ – ‘a critical (and neglected) source of systemic support’ (p. 6).
How do perceptions of citizens’ autonomy impact regime support? Autonomy is understood as ‘self-governance’, which means ‘that decision-making authority is granted to those that will be bound by those decisions’ (p. 6). Regimes that adopt and implement participatory institutions satisfy citizens’ psychological need for self-determination, even if their representative institutions have major shortcomings. Participatory institutions give citizens a sense of efficacy and control over their well-being. Thus, citizens from these countries have a greater evaluation of regime-based efficiency (RBE) – in short, the perception that one's participation matters for political outcomes (RBE is how the author operationalises autonomy). Furthermore, autonomy can mediate the evaluation of policy performance, making citizens less demanding and critical of regimes: ‘[P]olities filled with citizens who believe themselves to be autonomous can weather economic storms that would otherwise sink them.’ (p. 86)
In order to substantiate his theory, Rhodes-Purdy follows a multi-methods approach. He first shows through an analysis of survey data that: (i) policy performance by itself cannot explain the levels of regime support observed in Latin American countries; and (ii) the number and type of participatory institutions in a country are positively correlated with regime support. He then uses the cases of Chile and Venezuela to show the limits of performance arguments as well as the soundness of his theory. On the one hand, while Chile has reasonably good policy performance, its regime support is quite low. On the other hand, Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez was quite the governance disaster but nonetheless attained a much better evaluation than Chile in regard to regime support. What explains this apparent contradiction?
The presence or absence of participatory institutions is the answer. Venezuela was an elite democracy until Chávez came to power in 1998. An in-depth look at the Venezuelan case across its recent history shows how several participatory institutions adopted under Chávez fostered citizens’ beliefs in the efficacy of his government's political involvement, thereby enhancing support for the regime even as representative democracy was eroded. In contrast, the absence of participation affects regime support in Chile, another elite democracy that has few opportunities for direct public political involvement. In order to test the counterfactual argument that a greater number of participatory institutions will increase regime support, Rhodes-Purdy conducts (i) an analysis of survey data that shows how the Chilean party system suffers from a crisis of participation, not representation; (ii) an experiment that shows the impact of participatory programmes on regime support; and (iii) an evaluation of a qualitative participatory programme in a local government that confirms his proposed relation.
This book makes a substantive contribution to a better understanding of regime support – a fundamental but elusive topic in political science. The work clearly shows the limitations of using extant performance-based theories to fully understand what determines regime support in democracies. And, by doing so, it opens up a whole new way of looking at participatory institutions as a source of legitimacy for polities. On the one hand, this research can inform us of ways to enhance democratic legitimacy in ossified political regimes. On the other hand, it shows how participation can be used to eclipse proper evaluation of policy performance, making citizens more forgiving of populist or incompetent political rulers. I cannot do justice in this brief space to the painstaking work done by the author to disentangle the diverse literature focusing on regime support, in itself an additional contribution of the book. From now on this work will be a necessary reference when exploring the determinants of regime support.
I have two queries about this provocative work. The first one is regarding how the author operationalises a key concept in his causal theory. To measure RBE (as mentioned above, the way in which autonomy is operationalised), the author uses three survey categories: ‘the belief that politicians care about what people like the respondent think; the belief that parties respond to the opinion of voters like respondents; and confidence in political parties’ (p. 96). These may be the best and only available choices in current surveys, but they do not seem to fully capture the efficacy dimension demanded by the concept of autonomy. Future surveys may be able to come up with more precise measurements for this crucial variable in the theory.
My second worry is about how atypical the Venezuelan case is. Does it provide us with a proper weighting regarding the relevance of participatory institutions for regime support? As mentioned, before Chávez, Venezuela was an elitist democracy. Participatory institutions adopted during his regime marked quite a strong contrast with the past. Thus, the effect of such institutions on regime support may be atypically high in this country. In other countries where participatory institutions have been part of everyday life and have lacked proper implementation, their effect may be less pronounced; they will not produce feelings of efficacy and recognition similar to the ones observed in Chávez's Venezuela. Is this positive effect over regime support mediated by a previous experience with a limited, elitist democracy? How relevant are participatory institutions under more normal political conditions? And how relevant do they remain if, over time, these institutions are perceived as ineffective? These open questions do not affect the relevance of this ground-breaking work but, rather, point to its substantive contribution. This is an urgent research agenda, given the current worrisome situation around the legitimacy of many democracies, old and new, in the world.
