Does Political Participation Affect Political Stability? A Study of Latin America During the 19th and 20th Centuries

Political stability is necessary for the proper conduct of both private and public life in so-ciety. The old-standing question is whether and how political stability depends on political participation: who participates, how many participate, and how do they participate in pol-itics? Based on an original data file that includes information about political institutions and political events since independence, I employ three measures of political stability- coups d’etat, constitutional change, and executive turnover- to confront the leading hypotheses in the literature that relate political participation to political stability. While the data did not provide definitive support on whether political participation affected political stability, a fas-cinating finding emerged from the analyses. The empirical evidence indicated that allowing for at least a modicum level of political opposition promoted political stability throughout the independent histories of Latin American countries, regardless of political participation