Citizen engagement and political trust in LAC

Abstract

By examining responses to the Latinobarometro 2020 survey, this paper advances the understanding of the linkage between trust in government and citizen participation in Latin- America and the Caribbean (LAC). Conflicting theories address this linkage: stealth democracy proponents argue that an inverse relationship exist between political trust and citizen engagement, whilst deliberative democracy theorists claim that the opposite is true. In light of this opposing views, we seek to determine which theory most accurately describes this relationship in LAC. We rely on both traditional econometrics and more sophisticated machine learning techniques to identify the key factors driving the linkage between trust in government and citizen involvement in LAC. We find that socioeconomic status drives participation and that whether deliberative or stealth democracy is more effective in explaining engagement depends on the type of participation forum. Importantly, intricate non-linear patterns affect citizen participation.

Keywords: Citizen participation; political trust; Stealth democracy; Latin-America and Caribbean; Machine learning; Lasso; Random Forest.