Looking behind the window: measuring instrumental and normative reasoning in support for democracy

Standard arguments of rationality applied to individual political decisions do not take into account the plurality of forms of political reasoning in the process of preference formation. Scholars tend to rely on an economic model of preferences formation, and tend to characterize the underlying psychological basis of preferences formation as utilitarian. This implies that the expressive rationalities are excluded in this kind of explanation. This paper explores the types of rationality that underlie popular choices of political regime in societies that recently completed a transition towards democracy. It discusses the nature of the rational bases used for preference formation by focusing on urban Brazilians. It centers on the balance between survey respondents’ evaluation of democratic performance and their views of the efficacy of democracy to solve their country’s problems. It examines the joint impact of these attitudes on molding citizens’ preferences for a particular type of government in Brazil.

The analysis tests and discusses the following arguments as alternatives:

• Whether support for democracy - a normative preference - is related to citizens’ evaluations of the performance of democracy - a positive belief
• The “means-to-ends” rationale which proposes that support for democracy depends on the evaluation of democracy efficacy to accomplish certain goals that are either desired or positively valued
• The axiological rationality of preference formation which goes beyond assessing the subjective or immediate consequences of the referred political regime.

The following are the results from the analysis:

• It endorses the hypothesis that an instrumental rationality prevails alongside axiological rationality
• Data analysis for Brazil highlights that satisfaction with existing democratic performance and the belief of competence shape the preference for a democratic type of regime
• Competence is almost equally attributed to both democracy and non-democracy
• Instrumental rationality impacts on the ability of individuals to connect more strongly perceptions of competence to support for democracy, than it does between perceptions of incompetence and adherence to non-democratic options
• For most Brazilians, democracy restoration and continuity gets its value not from any intrinsic legitimacy or ideological leverage connected to it individuals need to be convinced by means of satisfying records and sustainable evidence of efficacy to rally around democracy, not the opposite
• There is strong evidence of the “universality” of these findings given limited socio-demographic effects in the way individuals construct political support.