DESPITE an economic slowdown, Latin Americans feel pretty satisfied with their lives, but they don’t give much credit for that to their democratic institutions. Only a quarter of them think the distribution of wealth in their countries is fair (though that is up from a fifth in 2011). Although some Latin American governments are leaning towards decriminalising drugs, 67% of respondents think they should remain banned. Those are some of the conclusions from the latest Latinobarómetro poll, taken in 18 countries and published exclusively by The Economist. Because the poll has been taken regularly since 1995, it does a good job of showing how attitudes in the region are evolving.Slightly more than half of respondents to the poll are committed democrats, a figure that has remained fairly constant for the past few years (see chart 1). Support for democracy rose by ten points in Venezuela (to 87%, the highest in the region) since the last poll in 2011; that suggests that whatever the difficulties of Nicolás Maduro, the elected successor of Hugo Chávez, few Venezuelans favour an authoritarian intervention (see table). When people...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21588886-slightly-brighter-picture-democracy-not-liberal-freedoms-listen-me?fsrc=rss|ame
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