This paper reviews the context, causes, and consequences of mistrust of politicians in Latin America's current democratic era. In terms of context, we demonstrate that the very low trust in politicians in Latin America is merely one aspect of a syndrome of low trust across the board. In terms of causes of mistrust, we review three prominent features of democratic development over the past 15 years: poor economic performance affecting most new democracies in the region, corruption scandals, and the instrumental use of political institutions by incumbents. In terms of consequences, we examine the weak and uneven support for democracy across the region that appears to be causally related to mistrust of politicians. However, we avoid alarmism by arguing that these findings must be contextualized in light of the multidimensional low-trust syndrome of Latin America discussed above. Moreover, the reservoir of authoritarian attitudes is fragmentary and is rarely expressed coherently in political action. And finally, research on both advanced and emerging democracries has recently demonstrated that citizens are increasingly willing to separate their evaluations of incumbents (often negative) from their evaluation of democracy as a regume type.
trust; political mistrust; Latin America; democracy; survey data
