Permissive Winners? The Quality of Democracy and the Winner–Loser Gap in the Perception of Freedoms

Abstract

Voters usually differ in their assessment of the regime’s legitimacy, depending on their status as winners or losers. However, how wide or narrow the winner–loser gap is also depends on the quality of democratic institutions. Using survey data from 18 Latin American countries, this research provides evidence that winners and losers respond differently to the quality of democracy. While most research is concerned with the losers’ consent, this study shows that the winners express more favorable assessments of the supply of freedoms, even in regimes where democracy is weak or undermined by the deliberate efforts of the political authorities. Instead, in their perception of freedoms, losers are more willing to acknowledge if the quality of democracy improves or declines. These results suggest that the potential consequences of the winner–loser gap for regime stability are highly dependent on the democratic attributes of the political context.

Keywords

winner–loser gap regime legitimacy basic freedoms liberal democracy political context

In the study of political support, the winner–loser gap constitutes a significant puzzle. Political trust and regime support are usually deemed valuable attributes of robust and stable democracies (Diamond, 1999: 168). Nevertheless, voters whose preferred parties or candidates succeed in winning elections are usually more satisfied with democracy or trustful of political institutions than citizens who find themselves on the losing side (see, for instance, Anderson and LoTempio, 2002; Banducci and Karp, 2003; Nadeau and Blais, 1993; Nadeau et al., 2019). Thus, as a by-product of democratic elections, winners and losers consistently diverge in their support for institutions, opening a gap in the regime’s legitimacy that could increase the risk of political instability (Anderson et al., 2005).

In the literature, the influence of the winner–loser status on political support is primarily linked to the configuration of political representation. A substantial body of research demonstrates that political institutions and processes, such as constitutional designs, electoral systems, or electoral contests, interact with voter’s winner or loser status to define political support (Anderson and Guillory, 1997; Anderson and Tverdova, 2001; Banducci and Karp, 2003; Blais et al., 2017; Blais and Gélineau, 2007; Curini et al., 2012; Esaiasson, 2011). At the same time, an increasing number of studies show that system-level attributes also perform an essential function in explaining the legitimacy gap between winners and losers (Anderson and Tverdova, 2001; Han and Chang, 2016; Martini and Quaranta, 2019). Specifically, Dahlberg and Linde (2016) highlight the role that the quality of democratic elections and the rule of law play in defining the winner–loser gap in satisfaction with democracy. Nonetheless, the variation of the winner–loser gap across different levels of democratic quality remains largely understudied.

This article contributes to an ongoing research agenda focused on how the country-level quality of democratic governance interacts with the winner–loser status at an individual level to explain political support and regime legitimacy. This study uses survey and contextual data from 18 Latin American nations—a region where the strength of democratic institutions varies widely—to examine the conditional relationship between the quality of democracy and the winner–loser status. The analysis is performed on a group of indicators measuring citizen’s appraisal of the regime’s supply of basic democratic freedoms: freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of political opinion, and protection of human rights. Using concrete measures of the citizen’s views of democratic rights and freedoms, it helps to bridge the scholarship on the consequences of the winner–loser gap and the study of the citizens’ perspective on the quality of democracy (Mayne and Geißel, 2018; Pickel et al., 2016).

The argument put forward is that winner–loser gap reflects the polarization that exists in the electorate regarding the democratic quality of political institutions. Citizens are expected to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the regime’s democratic attributes, but their assessments will diverge as a function of their electoral choices. If the legitimacy of the political system is usually a contested issue, variations on the quality of democracy should accentuate the divergence between winners and losers. Accordingly, this study shows that citizen’s appraisal of basic freedoms is dependent on both their winner–loser status and the regime’s democratic quality. In political systems where liberal-democratic institutions are unstable or weak, the gap between winners and losers is wider. These results contribute to underscoring that the risks posed by the political polarization between winners and losers largely depend on the democratic features of the political context. Loser’s consent may be essential in cases where support for democratic institutions is desirable (Anderson et al., 2005). Instead, the winners’ restraint might be crucial in cases where democracy is fragile (Singer, 2018). As this research illustrates, winners are more willing to provide favorable assessments of the protection of freedoms than losers, particularly in regimes where liberal-democratic institutions are severely limited. In some cases, this implicates conferring legitimacy to regimes where authoritarian incumbents have eroded democracy.

This article is organized as follows: the first section briefly discusses why the winner–loser gap is relevant for regime support. The second section provides a review of the literature, formulates the theoretical argument, and establishes the hypothesis. Then, discussion of data sources, measurement procedures, descriptive information, and multilevel modeling follows accordingly. Results are thoroughly discussed before an overview of the findings is presented in the concluding section.

Regime Legitimacy and the Winner–Loser Gap

Democracy is a system of rule in which political authorities are accountable to the people through elections, public opinion, and other procedures (Manin et al., 1999; Warren, 2014). Like any other form of rule, democracies require political legitimacy: the belief that power is exercised rightfully and according to the prescribed norms (Beetham, 2013: 25–37). Unlike any other type of regime, however, the consolidation and stability of democracies demand trust and support from its citizens (Foa and Mounk, 2017; Linz and Stephan, 1996), even if it is expressed in tandem with dissatisfaction with the regime’s performance (Klingemann, 2014; Norris, 2011).

The quest for political legitimacy in contemporary democracies is a frequently contested and exacting process. A crucial challenge to the legitimacy of democratic systems lies at the very core of its procedural basis: as a matter of principle, competitive elections produce a division between winners and losers in the electorate. Voters who are on the winning side of an election systematically confer more legitimacy to the regime than citizens who find themselves on the losing camp (Anderson et al., 2005; Anderson and Guillory, 1997; Esaiasson, 2011; Nadeau and Blais, 1993). Future contests may alter the distribution of winners and losers, as it is expected from democratic elections (Przeworski, 2005). Indeed, by reducing the gap in political legitimacy, alternations in government help to consolidate emerging democracies (Moehler and Lindberg, 2009). Nonetheless, even after accounting for electoral contests over time, the winner–loser gap persists as a by-product of the outcomes of competitive elections (Martini and Quaranta, 2019).

The persistence of a legitimacy gap between winners and losers is usually considered consequential to the stability of democratic regimes. A persistent gap could motivate voters to abstain from politics, adopt contentious tactics to influence policy, or even seek an overhaul of the institutional status quo. In the literature, there is an agreement that much depends on the loser’s gracefulness to consent to election outcomes, remain supportive of political institutions, and keep competing under the established rules (Anderson et al., 2005; Esaiasson, 2011). Other studies suggest, however, that the winners’ restraint is equally important to the stability of democracy. Winners may be willing to delegate power to allow incumbents to fulfill their promises, but at the same time tolerate encroachments on democratic freedoms from the very same authorities that benefit from the voters’ trust (Moehler, 2009; Singer, 2018). As it turns out, both political support from winners and distrust from losers could stand at cross-purposes with democracy’s stability.

Due to the significance that the winner–loser gap entails for democracy, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms that produce contrasting regime’s assessments in the electorate. Recent studies show that the mechanisms that differentiate winners and losers are related to the linkage established between voters and their representatives. Besides the emotional and cognitive repercussions of being on the winning or the losing side, voters assume that endorsing the elected candidates will produce more benefits for the winners and less for the losers (Anderson et al., 2005: 23–29). As a consequence, winners are usually more politically satisfied than losers because they expect that the policy process will reflect their preferences and produce outcomes that increase their welfare. At the same time, voters’ electoral choices are connected to previous political beliefs and dispositions that further differentiate their opinions. In addition to the potential utility derived from being a winner or not, voters’ electoral choices are markers of political affinities shaping their attitudes and behaviors. As Martini and Quaranta (2019: 345–346) indicate, “people tend to self-categorize as rival group members, sharing positive and negative experiences connected to winning or losing elections.” This, in turn, makes voters try “to maintain consistency between beliefs and their electoral status,” processing information differently and providing diverging regime assessments. Singer (2018: 1761) similarly argues that voters are willing to delegate power “to executives that they believe share their interests” and support them if their policy outcomes are favorable, despite the executive’s potential authoritarian tendencies.

An extensive body of evidence corroborates that the winner–loser status reflects how voters react to the electoral contests and political institutions that define governments and shape political representation. For instance, Anderson and Guillory (1997) compare the effect of consensual versus majoritarian institutions on satisfaction with democracy, finding that losers are less dissatisfied in more consensual systems. Other studies examine voters’ political satisfaction before and after an election, showing that voting for the winners boosts positive assessments of democracy (Banducci and Karp, 2003; Blais et al., 2017; Blais and Gélineau, 2007; Singh et al., 2012). Similarly, Curini et al. (2012) show that past experiences of being a winner or a loser modify the effect of present electoral outcomes and that ideological proximity to the ruling parties increases satisfaction among consistent winners. The winner–loser status is also relevant when citizens assess the relative merits of the potential consequences of electoral reforms, with winners being more risk-averse than losers (Bowler and Donovan, 2007).

Explaining the winner–loser gap in regime support, at the same time, requires evaluating the role played by the political context. Particularly when what is at stake is the citizen’s appraisal of democratic institutions, it requires assessing the conditional effect of the quality of democratic governance itself.

Democracy, the Winner–Losers Gap, and the Appraisal of Citizen’s Freedoms

Electoral winners and losers frequently diverge in their assessment of regime legitimacy. Depending on the role of elections, the constitutional design, and the type of electoral systems, the gap between winners and losers varies in magnitude (e.g. Anderson et al., 2005; Blais et al., 2017; Esaiasson, 2011). The winner–loser gap also changes after the effects of other system-level determinants, such as the performance of the economy (Martini and Quaranta, 2019), extremism in the mass media at the country level (Lelkes, 2016), a system of social protections (Lühiste, 2013), or income inequality (Han and Chang, 2016).

The regime assessments of winners and losers, however, are also decisively influenced by the quality of political institutions, and not just by the type of political institutions (Dahlberg and Linde, 2016). A rising number of studies not only show that the quality of democratic governance influences regime support and satisfaction (Christmann, 2018; Dahlberg and Holmberg, 2014; Magalhães, 2014; Wagner et al., 2009), but also that the quality of democratic institutions modifies the attitudes of both winners and losers. For instance, Anderson and Tverdova (2003) find that winners and losers respond differently to the country’s level of corruption. Martini and Quaranta (2019) confirm that the quality of government reduces the winner–loser gap in political support. Similarly, Dahlberg and Linde (2016) offer evidence that both the consolidation of the electoral process and the rule of law have distinctive effects on voters, depending on their winner or loser status.

Despite the increased interest on the conditional effects of the quality of democratic governance, the variation of the winner–loser gap across different levels of democratic development remains largely understudied. In addition, most research on the consequences of the winner–loser status focuses on trust in political institutions and satisfaction with democracy as measures of political support. Increasingly, however, political scientists are testing alternative measurements of the citizens’ perspective on the quality of democracy (Mayne and Geißel, 2018; Pickel et al., 2016; Quaranta, 2018). As Fuchs and Roller (2018: 25) contend, “ . . . when interested in the quality of a democracy, the perspective of citizens has to be taken into account because citizens are the ultimate sovereign of democracy.” This study adopts a similar perspective, focusing on the people’s appraisal of the extent to which the political system delivers and protects fundamental rights and freedoms (Zechmeister, 2017). Differing from Fuchs and Roller’s (2018) purpose of assessing support for normative conceptions of democracy, however, in this case the focal point are citizens’ evaluations of particular attributes of the democracy.

In this research, I argue that citizen’s status as electoral winners or losers decisively impacts their opinions regarding the protection of freedoms and rights in their country, producing divergent assessments. How much their assessments diverge, however, will depend on the regime’s quality of democratic institutions. Previous research indicates that people’s regime evaluations are positively influenced by the quality of political institutions (see, for instance, Christmann, 2018; Dahlberg and Holmberg, 2014; Magalhães, 2014; Wagner et al., 2009). When citizens evaluate the supply and protection of freedoms, their opinions should be influenced by the actual quality of democratic institutions in their regime. In stable democracies, citizens should provide more favorable accounts of the status of liberties and freedoms than citizens from struggling or defective democracies. However, as the evidence on the winner–loser gap illustrates, if citizens will differ in their assessment of the political regime and its performance depending on their status as winners or losers, they are also expected to provide diverging accounts of the protection of liberties in their countries. As a consequence, winners should offer more favorable and optimistic accounts than losers.

The crucial point is that winners and losers will express different judgments, depending on the quality of democracy in their political system. In established liberal democracies, where rulers are bounded by the rule of law, and democratic freedoms are protected, the gap between winners and losers should be narrow. As a result of the electoral outcomes, winners foresee that their preferences are represented in the policy process and expect increased benefits from the government’s performance. Meanwhile, losers know that they can voice their disagreement, engage in protest if necessary, and contest in future elections. In any case, both parties should recognize that their freedoms are provided and protected. As Dahlberg and Linde (2016) indicate, some voters are willing to “lose happily” if they live in countries where democracy and the rule of law prevail, compared to more dissatisfied losers in regimes where the quality of democratic governance is inferior.

Nonetheless, in countries where liberal-democratic institutions are limited or unstable, the gap between winners and losers is expected to be much wide. In weaker democracies, being on the winning or losing side could make a crucial difference, not only in terms of which policies are to be pursued or which interests are to be represented but also in terms of protecting fundamental rights and freedoms. When the quality of democracy is deficient, voters might recognize that particular political regime attributes are defective or inadequate. Some of them, however, will concede much less importance to the limitations on freedoms and liberties—those who voted for the elected executive. Winners might be willing to delegate power and accept infringements on democratic guarantees on the condition that the incumbents deliver on their promises, even in a situation of increased risks of political instability and democratic backsliding.¹ Losers, on the contrary, will distrust the rule of law and would be unable to take their freedoms for granted. Indeed, previous research shows that in less consolidated democracies, voters differ in their willingness to control the incumbents when they are overstepping their limits. Moehler (2009) finds in a group of African countries that winners are less willing to counteract the incumbents in case they erode democratic institutions. Equally, Singer (2018) demonstrates that Latin American winning voters are keen to delegate power to an effective president, even if this implies limiting checks and balances and democratic freedoms. Thus, as the regime’s democratic attributes deteriorate, winners and losers will provide increasingly divergent accounts of the quality of democratic institutions. Political polarization in the electorate should increase, and the gap between winners and losers is expected to grow wide.

In summary, this study tests the following three hypotheses:

H1. The winner–loser gap should be manifest in citizens’ appraisal of basic freedoms. Winners should perceive that their liberties are protected to a higher degree than losers.

H2. The quality of liberal democracy at the country level is positively associated with citizen’s perceived supply of democratic freedoms or negatively associated with the perceived deficit of liberties. In countries where liberal democracy is firmly established, citizens will recognize that basic freedoms are provided and protected. In the opposite situation, where democracy is weak, people are expected to be more critical toward the protection of freedoms.

H3. The quality of liberal democracy conditions the effect of the winner–loser gap in citizens’ appraisal of basic freedoms. The gap should be larger in unstable democracies than in more robust and established liberal-democratic regimes.

Data and Measurement

This research uses data from 18 Latin American countries to assess whether the quality of democracy modifies the winner–loser gap in the appraisal of basic freedoms. Using data from Latin America serves the purpose of analyzing voters’ perceptions of freedoms in diverging democratic contexts, since countries in this region exhibit a significant amount of variation in the quality of democracy. The analysis is performed using the 2016–2017 wave of surveys from the America’s Barometer. Each country survey is based on a probability sample of voting-age adults.² Survey samples are representatives of the national population, stratified by major national sub-regions and urban/rural areas—the 18 country-samples combined result in a database of 29,060 observations.

In the countries included in the sample, there is an ample variety of trajectories of democratic development. Most of Latin America, except for Cuba, transitioned to democracy since the early eighties in the twentieth century. Only Colombia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela were already democratic regimes when the third wave reached the subcontinent.³ The rest endured different patterns of instability and breakdown until electoral regimes were established—the only exception being Mexico, which evolved from as stable, party-dominant, competitive-authoritarian system to electoral democracy. Over the last 20 years, both old and new democracies in the region followed diverging paths. While just a few countries persisted as liberal-democratic regimes—Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay—others struggled to consolidate stable electoral regimes or endured partial erosion and even significant backsliding (Levitsky, 2018; Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán, 2015).⁴

Despite the particular advances and setbacks in their struggle to build democratic institutions, all 18 regimes included in the analysis relied on the popular vote to elect the president and members of Congress at the time the data were collected (2016–2017)—in Latin America, the executive and the legislature are separate powers, defined by their separate electoral origin, fixed terms, and independent survival (Samuels and Shugart, 2010: 26–27). Even in those cases in which the incumbents incur in blatant efforts to manipulate the electoral process and outcomes, voters participate in national and local elections to defend their rights to appoint their representatives.⁵ With no exception, elected executives appeal to the will of the people as expressed at the ballots to claim legitimacy to rule. Likewise, voters are entitled to support or contest the democratic credentials of the regime.

In line with the hypotheses in this study, it is expected that the extent in which voters believe that basic freedoms are protected will not only depend on their winner or loser status but also on the quality of democracy in their country. Research using survey data from old and new democracies in Europe, Africa, and Latin America suggests that variations in the quality of democratic governance interact with voters’ winner or loser status (Dahlberg and Linde, 2016; Martini and Quaranta, 2019; Moehler, 2009; Singer, 2018). On this basis, the results from this research are expected to apply to the countries included in the analysis directly, but could also be extended to other cases where citizens disagree over the quality of democracy in their country.

Dependent Variables: The Perceived Deficit of Freedoms

The 2016–2017 round of surveys from the America’s Barometer includes a set of four items that are useful to approximate to the people’s appraisal of the quality of democratic freedoms.⁶ The first item gauges the perceived supply of freedom of the press: “Do you believe that nowadays in the country we have very little, enough or too much freedom of the press?” [item: lib1]. The ensuing two items ask about “freedom of expression” [lib2b] and “freedom to express political views without fear” [lib2c], respectively. The last one focuses on “Human Rights protection” [lib4]. Each item was reverted so that “Very Little” is the category with the highest value. In this manner, the analysis evaluates the perceived deficit in the supply of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of political expression, and Human Rights protection.⁷ These variables are tapping rights, freedoms, and liberties that are widely recognized as essential for citizens to participate in democratic politics (see, among others, Dahl, 1971). They will be referred to as basic liberties or basic freedoms indistinctly.⁸

The Winner–Loser Gap

The America’s Barometer inquires about voters’ choices in the last presidential elections. In the interview, people are queried if they voted to elect the executive. Depending on their response, they are asked for the name of the candidate they supported. On this basis, performing a combination of the answers to the two previous items, the independent variable is formed by distinguishing between Winners, Losers, and Non-voters. Winners are voters who declare having expressed support for the incumbent president; losers are voters who cast a vote for any of the losing candidates; non-voters are citizens who were entitled to vote but did not participate in the election. Non-voters constitute a category seldom used in the literature, but some studies find that non-voters produce a distinctive effect on satisfaction with democracy (Rich, 2015).

As Figure 1 indicates, a majority of citizens perceive that political systems in Latin America are failing to protect essential liberties. A large number of people judge that there is “very little” supply of the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to express political opinions, and protections for human rights. Interestingly, citizen’s views on this matter are further differentiated by their winner or loser status. In each of the dependent variables, the proportion of electoral losers that perceive deficits is larger than the proportion of winners. Losers are providing more critical appraisals of the supply of freedoms.

Figure 1.

The Supply of Basic Freedoms and the Winner-Loser Gap.

The Quality of Democracy

This research is interested in gauging the conditional influence of the quality of democracy at the country level on the dependent variables. The analysis is performed using the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) developed by the Varieties of Democracy Project (Coppedge et al., 2019a). The LDI is preferred to other measures of polyarchy or electoral democracy⁹ for substantive reasons. As one of the most important normative varieties of democracy, the ideal of liberal democracy comprises a competitive regime that approaches the ideal of self-government, but also includes checks and balances, the rule of law and guarantees for civil liberties. The LDI, thus, provides not only information regarding the integrity of competitive elections but also the extent to which citizen’s freedoms are kept from the reach of executive power by the rule of law.

The LDI is formed by the Electoral Democracy Index and the Liberal Component Index. The Electoral Democracy Index is based on Dahl’s (1989) concept of “polyarchy” and “embodies the core value of making rulers responsive to citizens through competition for the approval of a broad electorate during periodic elections” (Coppedge et al., 2016: 583). The Liberal Component Index “embodies the intrinsic value of protecting individual and minority rights against potential ‘tyranny of the majority’ and state repression more generally” (Coppedge et al., 2016: 583). Thus, on a continuous scale from 0 to 1, the LDI measures the realization of the ideals of electoral democracy and the liberal principle simultaneously. Each Latin American country is assigned its corresponding score in the LDI in the year preceding the survey—2015 or 2016 (see Figure 2). Countries with higher scores in the LDI are referred to using labels such as “higher quality,” “robust,” “consolidated,” or “established” democracies. Symmetrically, “lower quality,” “weaker,” “unconsolidated,” or “unstable” are used interchangeably to refer to regimes with lower scores in the LDI.

Figure 2.

The Liberal Democracy Index in Latin America (2015-2016).

Figure 3 provides a glimpse of the distribution of the winner–loser gap between countries. In Figure 3, countries are ranked by their score in the LDI (see Figure 2). At the top of the vertical axis are those regimes in which liberal democracy is more firmly established; those at the bottom are the less-democratic countries. According to the distribution of the data, the deficit in the supply of freedoms seems lower among the more robust democracies. Moreover, the winner–loser gap in the perceived supply of basic freedoms exhibits some variation between countries. In some cases, the gap is barely noticeable—as in Costa Rica, Chile, or Uruguay. In others, the disparity is distinctively wide—as in Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, or Venezuela.

Figure 3.

The Supply of Basic Freedoms and the Winner-Loser Gap in Latin America.

Control Variables

At the individual level, in addition to the categories of winners, losers, and non-voters, the analysis includes the set of usual socio-demographic controls: sex, age, years of formal education, occupation, rural-urban residence, and household welfare (Córdova, 2009). Likewise, in line with Dahlberg and Linde (2016), the analysis controls for the degree of interest in politics under the assumption that people who are more interested in public issues could become more aware of the status of freedoms and rights in their country. Similarly, a measure of ideological extremism is included (Anderson et al., 2005; Martini and Quaranta, 2019). Individuals holding radical beliefs, either from the left or right, may be more inclined to adopt a critical stance toward the political system. An indicator of the public’s evaluation of the national economy is also added to the models. When people perceive that the economy is performing favorably, they tend to express more satisfaction with democracy (Christmann, 2018; Magalhães, 2016). In the same line, trust in other people could enhance favorable impressions of the political system (Zmerli and Newton, 2008). Additionally, in Latin America, crime victimization negatively affects satisfaction with democracy (Ceobanu et al., 2010). It should be expected that victims of crime also perceive a larger deficit of freedoms. Finally, it is important to account for the possibility that recently elected presidents boost political support in the electorate. Following Singer (2018), a variable is introduced to control for the number of days that the president has been in office since he or she was elected—considering that each additional day provides increasingly less information, the variable is transformed to its natural logarithm.

At the country level, two additional variables are included as controls. On one hand, using data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a variable measures the rate of growth, in percentage, of each country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) at constant prices. On the other hand, previous research indicates that the majoritarian-consensual attributes of political institutions influence satisfaction with democracy (Anderson et al., 2005; Martini and Quaranta, 2019). Most studies on this subject are performed on parliamentary democracies. However, Latin American regimes are presidential systems. As an alternative approximation to the majoritarian-consensual dimension in Latin America, the analysis includes the Divided party control index. It measures the degree to which the executive and legislature are controlled by different political parties (Coppedge et al., 2019b: 281–282). This variable is standardized to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Positive extreme values signal “divided party control” of the executive and the legislature; intermediate values represent some form of a unified coalition; negative values signify “unified party control.” The number of country-level control variables is limited to two since the number of clusters at this level of measurement is also small—18 countries.

Method

Descriptive information displayed in Figures 1 and 2 above suggests that citizen’s appraisal of basic freedoms varies within and between countries. Table A3 in the Supplementary Information confirms that accounting for the clustered structure of the data is advised. Then, to account for the between-country variation in the dependent variables, the hypotheses are tested using multilevel ordered logistic models. All the dependent variables are measured on a 3-point scale ranging from “Too Much” to “Very Little” supply of freedoms. Ordinal logistic regression estimates the expected values of a latent continuous variable that predicts the dependent variable’s outcomes as a linear function of the independent variables and a set of thresholds. Each threshold is a different intercept for the estimated cumulative probabilities of the observed categories of the outcome. These thresholds determine which categorical response is observed when the latent variable adopts specific values. The modeling strategy assumes that the expected probability of observing a deficit in the supply of basic freedoms varies randomly between countries and that the influence of the winner–loser status also varies between countries. These assumptions implicate that both the intercept β_0j and the slopes β_1j in the single-level regression equation are random parameters that should be modeled using second-level regressions (see Hox et al., 2018: 133–136). Following standard practice, all individual-level control variables were centered on their group mean, and country-level control variables were centered on their respective grand mean.

Results and Discussion

Is there a winner–loser gap in the assessment of basic democratic freedoms and human rights? If that is the case, is the magnitude of this gap modified by the quality of liberal democracy? Table 1 displays the results of the multilevel modeling analysis aimed at providing answers to these questions. Table 1 presents the output of four different models, one for each dependent variable. The dependent variables are measured in a scale that ranges from perceiving “too much” to perceiving “very little” freedoms, having “enough” freedoms as an intermediate category. The results already include all control variables and the cross-level interaction testing the three hypotheses of the present research.

Table 1.

Citizens’ Perception of Basic Freedoms: Cross-Level Interaction Analysis.

	Deficit of freedom of the press		Deficit of freedom of speech		Deficit of freedom of political opinion		Deficit of protection of human rights
	M1		M2		M3		M4
Winners
Non-voters	0.633***	(0.184)	0.716***	(0.190)	0.528***	(0.160)	0.208	(0.163)
Losers	0.950***	(0.181)	1.346***	(0.187)	1.043***	(0.157)	1.029***	(0.161)
Liberal Democracy Index	−0.970	(0.517)	−0.361	(0.403)	−0.951	(0.529)	−0.763	(0.459)
Cross-level interaction
Liberal Democracy Index × Non-voters	−0.671*	(0.383)	−0.820*	(0.350)	−0.505	(0.294)	−0.197	(0.299)
Liberal Democracy Index × Losers	−1.178***	(0.379)	−1.856***	(0.343)	−1.361***	(0.288)	−1.477***	(0.295)
Individual-level controls
Female	−0.131***	(0.025)	0.042	(0.025)	0.110***	(0.026)	0.229***	(0.028)
Age	−0.010*	(0.004)	−0.012**	(0.004)	−0.030***	(0.004)	0.013**	(0.005)
Age²	0.000	(0.000)	0.000	(0.000)	0.000***	(0.000)	−0.000**	(0.000)
Education	0.008*	(0.003)	0.002	(0.004)	0.011**	(0.004)	0.007	(0.004)
Employed	−0.019	(0.026)	−0.035	(0.027)	−0.038	(0.028)	0.012	(0.029)
Rural location	0.083**	(0.029)	0.009**	(0.030)	−0.031**	(0.031)	−0.026	(0.032)
Household wealth	−0.029**	(0.011)	−0.048***	(0.011)	−0.039***	(0.011)	−0.050***	(0.012)
Interest in politics	0.006	(0.012)	−0.050***	(0.012)	−0.063***	(0.013)	−0.111***	(0.013)
Ideological extremism	0.001**	(0.007)	−0.006	(0.007)	−0.028***	(0.008)	−0.025**	(0.008)
National economy	−0.169***	(0.018)	−0.253***	(0.019)	−0.264***	(0.019)	−0.271***	(0.020)
Social trust	−0.056***	(0.013)	−0.090***	(0.013)	−0.080***	(0.014)	−0.140***	(0.015)
Crime victimization	0.064**	(0.028)	0.152**	(0.029)	0.176***	(0.030)	0.230***	(0.032)
Days since election (Log)	−0.108	(0.522)	−0.504	(0.532)	0.107	(0.552)	0.728	(0.587)
Country-level controls
Divided Party Control	0.179*	(0.090)	0.122	(0.091)	0.204*	(0.101)	0.104	(0.083)
GDP Annual growth %	−0.012	(0.016)	−0.007	(0.017)	0.011	(0.018)	−0.001	(0.015)
Thresholds
Too much/enough	−1.490	(0.276)	−1.666	(0.202)	−2.190	(0.282)	−2.611	(0.245)
Enough/too little	−0.169	(0.276)	−0.046	(0.201)	−0.582	(0.281)	−0.966	(0.245)
Variance components
Variance (winners)	0.074	(0.029)	0.096	(0.036)	0.050	(0.022)	0.050	(0.022)
Variance (country-level)	0.090	(0.031)	0.103	(0.033)	0.113	(0.039)	0.074	(0.026)
Log-likelihood	−26,623.24		−25,067.83		−23,887.78		−26,623.24
Number of observations	26,092		26,276		26,261		26,237
Number of countries	18		18		18		18

GDP: gross domestic product.

Models M1 to M4 are multilevel random-slope ordered logistic models. Standard errors in parenthesis.

p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

The appraisal of basic freedoms among Latin American citizens is influenced, first, by several of the micro and macro determinants introduced as control variables. Results indicate, for instance, that women tend to perceive larger deficits than men in the protection of freedom of political opinion and human rights, while men assess more critically the supply of freedom of the press. Younger people are usually less critical than middle-aged and older voters. When it comes to the appraisal of the protection of human rights, middle-aged voters perceive a larger deficit than the rest. The years of education are positively associated with the perception of larger deficits in freedoms of speech and political expression. However, people living in wealthier households are more like to perceive that there is “enough” or even “too much” supply of basic liberties. The findings show that negative evaluations of the country’s economy, distrust of other people, or being a victim of crime increase perceptions that freedoms are in short supply. Intriguingly, perceived deficits are more common among people who are less interested in politics. Ideological extremism, either from the left or right, increases the probability of perceiving a deficit in the protection of freedom of the press, but reduces the likelihood that freedom of political expression or human rights as seen as under-supplied. Rural voters also perceive less liberties than urban voters. Finally, at a contextual level, divided party control is positively related to the perceived deficits of basic liberties. While more research is needed to explain this result, it implies that voters tend to perceive larger deficits in the supply of freedoms in countries in which the executive and the legislature are controlled by different parties.

On the contrary, the first two hypotheses evaluate the direct and unconditioned relationships at the individual and contextual levels, respectively (these results are displayed in Table A4 in the Supplementary Information). The first hypothesis establishes that winner–loser status should produce a statistically significant difference in the dependent variables. The second hypothesis evaluates the effect of the political context on the outcome variables. As expected by the first hypothesis, losers are more critical than winners at the moment of gauging the protection and supply of basic liberties in their country. Non-voters are also more critical than winners, with the sole exception of the perceived protection of human rights. As it turns out, winners are more trustful than both losers and non-voters that the regime protects and guarantees freedoms. Regarding the second hypothesis, the results show that the LDI is negatively associated with the perceived deficits of basic freedoms. The likelihood that people believe that freedoms and human rights are limited in their country decreases with as the quality of democracy increases.

The third hypothesis focuses on the cross-level interaction between the winner–loser status and liberal democracy at the country level. The results provide evidence that the quality of liberal democracy conditions the winner–loser gap in all four indicators of citizens’ opinions concerning their liberties and human rights. Winners and losers differ in their perception of freedoms, but the magnitude of such a difference depends on the quality of the liberal-democratic regime. In robust liberal democracies, winners and losers essentially agree on their judgment. Instead, in political regimes where democracy is severely limited, disagreement prevails. Voter’s perceptions of freedoms and human rights, in consequence, depend on their winner or loser status as much as on the quality of democratic institutions in their country.

A more detailed illustration of the conditional relationship between the democratic context and the winner–loser status is displayed in Figure 4. This figure shows the predicted probability of observing a particular outcome when the quality of liberal democracy varies from its minimum (0) to its maximum (1) values. The outcomes are perceptions of “too much,” “enough,” or “too little” of a particular freedom or human rights. Figure 4 compares the predicted probability expected for winners and losers for each dependent variable. Some findings are worth emphasizing. In the first place, the conditional effect of the quality of democracy is especially meaningful for the electoral losers. If the stability and strength of liberal-democratic institutions increases, the perceived supply of freedoms and human rights also improves among the losers. For every outcome in every dependent variable, an increase in the quality of democracy produces more positive assessments of freedoms and rights when voters belong to the losing side. That is not necessarily the case for voters who are on the winning camp. Among the winners, even when improvements in the quality of democracy shift their opinions in a favorable direction, the differences are not statistically significant. Winners living in weak democracies are somewhat less optimistic than their counterparts in strong democracies, but ultimately share the same opinions.

Figure 4.

The Quality of Democracy, the Winner-Loser Status, and the Perceived Supply of Freedoms: Marginal Predicted Probabilities (95% CI).

If losers, more than winners, are more sensible to improvements on the quality of democracy, they are also more critical of the protections of freedoms when democracy is actually weak. As the “Too Little” supply of freedoms outcome in Figure 4 shows, the effect of the quality of democracy is much more pronounced among the losing voters. They believe that the deficit of freedoms and human rights are larger when liberal democracy is at is minimum, but are willing to perceive much less deficit if the regime actually improves. Among the winners, as previously noted, the effect of the quality of democracy does not produce statistically significant modifications in their opinions.

Winners and losers thus seem to react differently to the democratic attributes of the political environment. The question is, how much do they differ when democracy takes a particular value? In other words, how much do the winner–loser gap increases or decreases in magnitude when the quality of democracy varies? To address these questions, Figure 5 presents the result of a contrast analysis, depicting the estimated difference between the mean predicted probabilities for losers and winners of perceiving a deficit of freedom of the press or freedom of speech at different scores of the LDI. It should be noted, first, that at the highest score of the LDI the contrast between winners and losers is statistically non-existent. Meanwhile, as the LDI approaches its minimum, the probability that losers declare that there is a deficit of freedom increases. For instance, by a difference of 20% (the 95% confidence interval ranges from a probability of 0.12–0.29), it is more likely that losers declare that the supply of freedom of the press is “very little.” A similar relationship is visible when people assess their freedom of speech. When the quality of liberal democracy reaches its minimum, the probability that losers perceive a deficit is 28% (0.20, 0.35) higher. Instead, as the quality of liberal democracy improves, the contrast disappears.

Figure 5.

The Winner-Loser Gap in the Perceived Deficit of Freedoms: Contrast of Mean Predicted Probabilities (95% CI).

Similarly, Figure 5 illustrates the contrast between winners and losers in their appraisal of freedoms of political expression and the protection of human rights. The gap is virtually non-existent in robust liberal democracies. Both winners and losers coincide in their critical appraisal of the freedom to express political opinions or guarantees for human rights. However, as the quality of democracy decreases, the gap becomes statistically significant. For instance, losers have 19% (0.11, 0.26) more probabilities than winners of detecting a deficit of freedom to express political opinions at the lower end of the LDI. If the protection of human rights is at stake, the conditioning effect of the political context is likewise manifest. Compared to winners, the mean probability of perceiving a deficit for losers is 16% (0.09, 0.22) higher when the scores of the LDI approaches zero. Instead, the gap for losers is also 11% (−0.18, −0.03) lower if the quality of democracy is at its maximum. As it happens, in such a situation, losers perceive even more protection for human rights than winners.

These results provide evidence that the quality of liberal democracy performs a crucial role in defining the winner–loser gap in the appraisal of basic freedoms. On the basis of such evidence, it could be argued that the winner–loser gap reflects the polarization that exists in the electorate regarding the democratic quality of political institutions. In some countries, winners and losers do not differ at all in their appraisal. In others, there is a significant divergence in their opinions. According to the findings presented above, how much winners and losers disagree with each other depends on the quality of liberal-democratic institutions. In political systems where liberal-democratic institutions are severely limited, winners and losers diverge the most in their political judgment of the supply of basic freedoms. Crucially, to the extent that losers perceive a larger deficit in the supply of liberties, it seems that they are offering more accurate judgments than winners. By expressing more generous assessments under similar circumstances, winners seem more trustful of the institutional status quo. In particular cases, it could implicate that winners are also bestowing legitimacy on authoritarian incumbents.

Winner’s permissiveness toward governments who are responsible for eroding democracy is manifest in crucial cases. For the sake of illustration, the following discussion is focused on two dependent variables: assessments of freedom of the press and protection of human rights. In some cases, the gap between winners and losers in the appraisal of the freedom of the press and human rights is virtually non-existent. For example, with a score of 0.79 in the LDI, Uruguay is one of the most stable and consolidated liberal-democratic regimes in Latin America—in the sample of countries included in the present analysis, only Chile (0.80) and Costa Rica (0.82) score higher in the LDI. In Uruguay, if voters are asked about the freedom of the press, the probability of perceiving a deficit is 0.37 (0.30, 0.43) for losers and 0.37 (0.28, 0.44) for winners. Likewise, while the perceived deficit in the protection of human rights is somewhat large, the difference is statistically non-significant: winner’s predicted probability of a positive answer is 0.58 (0.51, 0.66) and losers’ is 0.55 (0.49, 0.61). If the scores in the LDI decrease, the winner–loser gap becomes more evident. At an LDI score of 0.50, the score of Colombia, the gap in the probability of perceiving deficits in the freedom of the press is already systematic (winners = 0.43 (0.38, 0.47); losers = 0.51 (0.48, 0.55)), but nonetheless marginally relevant if the question refers to the protection of human rights (winners = 0.64 (0.60, 0.67); losers = 0.70 (0.67, 0.72)).

The polarization between winners and losers becomes significant in regimes where democracy has endured significant erosion, as the case of Bolivia illustrates (LDI = 0.43). Under Evo Morales (2006–2019), institutions of horizontal accountability in Bolivia were wakened, and steps were advanced to incline the electoral playing field in favor of the incumbents (Levitsky and Loxton, 2013). In this case, winners perceive deficits in the supply of the freedom of the press (0.44, 0.39–0.49), or the protection of human rights (0.65, 0.61–0.69), to a lesser extent than losers—for whom the probability of seeing deficits in the freedom of the press is 0.55 (0.51, 0.58) and 0.73 (0.70, 0.75) for human rights. Ultimately, the contrast is even more perceptible in countries scoring 0.14 in the LDI, such as Nicaragua or Venezuela—Nicaragua became a competitive-authoritarian under the rule of Daniel Ortega (2007–present), following a similar path to that of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez (1999–2013), and Nicolás Maduro (2013–present) (Mainwaring, 2012; Weyland, 2013). The winner–loser gap in these cases not only reflects a deeply divided electorate. It also illustrates that winners are systematically less willing to recognize the infringement of freedoms than losers. At an LDI of 0.14, the predicted probability of perceiving a deficit of freedom of the press is 0.68 (0.62, 0.75) for losers and 0.51 (0.41, 0.60) for winners. The gap is wider in the assessment of human rights—the probability for winners is 0.69 (0.62, 0.77) and 0.83 (0.79, 0.87) for losers.

As a robustness test, the analysis was replicated excluding the most extreme cases at the bottom of the LDI: Nicaragua and Venezuela.¹⁰ When Nicaragua is excluded, all tests involving the interaction term between the winner–loser status and the LDI are statistically significant. When Venezuela is omitted, the interaction is also significant in all four dependent variables. If both countries are omitted from the analysis, the interaction effect is systematic in every test. These results suggest that the interactive relationship between the LDI and the winner–loser status does not depend exclusively on the influence of the extreme cases. The central hypothesis finds support in all the dependent variables, even when Nicaragua and Venezuela are excluded simultaneously. Furthermore, it could be argued that the inclusion of these two extreme cases is crucial to the analysis. While these cases represent instances of competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way, 2010), they are nonetheless political systems where universal suffrage is formally recognized and periodic elections celebrated. Excluding any of these cases may unjustifiably restrict the spectrum of political contexts in which voters’ beliefs and behavior matter to the incumbents’ legitimacy. As much as in the electoral and liberal democracies in the region, presidents in authoritarian competitive systems rely to some extent on voter’s belief that the regime is legitimate.

Conclusion

The present research contributes to the study of the conditional relationship between the winner–loser status and the quality of democracy by focusing on citizen’s assessment of basic freedoms in Latin America. It provides evidence, in the first place, that the winner–loser gap is manifest in the assessments of the protection of freedom of the press, speech, political opinion, and human rights. It also shows that the quality of liberal democracy at the regime level informs people’s appraisal of basic freedoms. In addition, the results indicate that voters react differently to the quality of liberal democracy, depending on their status as winners or losers. Electoral losers are more willing to acknowledge if the quality of democracy improves or declines. They provide more favorable assessments of the protection of basic freedoms when the level of liberal democracy is higher and offer less favorable evaluations when the level of liberal democracy is lower.

Most importantly, this article finds that the quality of liberal democracy conditions the winner–loser gap in the assessment of basic freedoms. The evidence shows that the winner–loser gap changes from wide to narrow, depending on the quality of the regime’s liberal-democratic institutions. In robust liberal democratic regimes, the winner–loser status makes no difference. Voters hold similar views of the supply of freedoms and rights provided by their political system. However, when liberal democracy is unequivocally restricted, winners and losers diverge significantly in their assessments. Losers are more critical of the supply of basic freedoms; winners, instead, express more favorable opinions. In such cases, the winner–loser gap likely illustrates the contrasting views regarding the democratic features of the political system in already polarized societies.

In particular, this study contributes to highlighting the role of the winners’ permissiveness toward the performance of the political system in those cases in which democracy is already in a difficult situation. Most of the literature attempt to explain the losers’ consent under the assumption that losers’ reluctance to recognize the legitimacy of the political system could induce instability or deconsolidation. The evidence discussed in this article contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the risks posed by the political polarization between winners and losers. It shows that the potential consequences of the winner–loser gap are largely dependent on the democratic quality of the political context. As the analysis illustrates, electoral losers are delivering more accurate descriptions of the situation of basic freedoms in regimes where liberal democracy is precarious. In contrast, the winners’ permissiveness represents an attitude that could provide legitimacy to regimes where democracy has been eroded by the deliberate efforts of the incumbent executive.

To conclude, these results reveal that electoral outcomes influence voter’s evaluations of the actual situation of freedoms in their country. Such a fact should be of interest to contemporary research on the citizen’s perspective on the quality of democracy, for it implies that peoples’ impartial judgments become compromised in countries where the quality of democracy is actually poor or limited. In struggling democracies, as the evidence indicates, voters who support the incumbent government will likely offer more rosy assessments than voters in the opposition. The evidence presented in this research comes from Latin America, a region where democracy varies significantly among countries and only a few regimes could be described as liberal democracies. The findings could help to anticipate voter’s assessments of freedoms in other regimes as well, especially in those cases where democratic institutions are weak or unstable, and the incumbent government polarizes public opinion. Overall, more research is needed to examine how the interaction of the winner–loser status and the quality of democracy at the regime level unfolds over time, using both conventional and emerging indicators of regime legitimacy and people’s assessments of democracy.

Supplemental Material

Online_Appendix_952230 – Supplemental material for Permissive Winners? The Quality of Democracy and the Winner–Loser Gap in the Perception of Freedoms

Supplemental material, Online_Appendix_952230 for Permissive Winners? The Quality of Democracy and the Winner–Loser Gap in the Perception of Freedoms by Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo in Political Studies

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the reviewers for their comments and suggestions, and also thanks the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and its major supporters (the United States Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Vanderbilt University) for making the data available.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo

Supplementary Information

Additional Supplementary Information may be found with the online version of this article.

Table A1. Variables and Measurement.

Table A2. Descriptive Statistics.

Table A3. Null Models.

Table A4. The Appraisal of Basic Freedoms: Multilevel Analysis.

Table A5. Cross-Level Interaction Analysis using the Electoral Democracy Index.

Table A6. Cross-Level Interaction Analysis Omitting Extreme Cases: Nicaragua.

Table A7. Cross-Level Interaction Analysis Omitting Extreme Cases: Venezuela.

Table A8. Cross-Level Interaction Analysis Omitting Extreme Cases: Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Notes

Author biography

Alejandro Monsiváis-Carrillo, PhD, is full professor of politics at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Public Center for Research and Postgraduate Studies in Mexico. His main research interests are regime support and political behavior in emerging democracies, with a particular interest in the relationship between public opinion and democratization in Latin America.

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