The effects of attitudes about economic inequality on support for markets and democracy in Latin America, 1995-2010

The potential effects of economic inequality on markets and democracy have received significant attention in recent years. Less attention, however, has been devoted to empirically examining the attitudinal aspects of these relationships. In this dissertation, I examine the effects of attitudes about inequality on attitudes about government regulation of the economy, illiberal democracy, and civic engagement. I examine these effects with nine multilevel data sets spanning 1995-2010 and in the Latin America context. The statistical findings provide weak empirical support for the hypothesis that greater dissatisfaction with inequality is associated with greater support for a more government-regulated economy. They also suggest that dissatisfaction with inequality is not systematically related to support for illiberal democracy. Furthermore, the findings provide weak empirical evidence that dissatisfaction with inequality is systematically related to civic engagement. Moreover, the effects of dissatisfaction with inequality on support for these three individual-level outcomes do not appear to be systematically conditioned by various individual- and country-level factors. Therefore, the results suggest that attitudes about economic inequality are not consistently related to various attitudes about markets and democracy in the recent Latin American context. The findings help adjudicate between competing claims about the effects of economic inequality on markets and democracy, and they also shed light on the potential durability of markets and democracy in 21st century Latin America in the wake of widespread public dissatisfaction with economic inequality.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Brain D. Crame