Beyond Electoral Democracy: Civil Society and the Construction of Democratic Citizenship in Latin America

My dissertation examines civil society's potential for strengthening democracy in the region. Existing research has come to conflicting conclusions about the strength of civil society activity in Latin America and this project seeks to addresses these divergent characterizations. I utilize two large international survey projects---the Latinobarometer and the World Values Survey---to examine the contention that an active civil society leads to stronger democracy in the context of Latin America.;I develop a framework for measuring civil society which draws on three major theoretical traditions: A Tocquevillian tradition sees civil society as associational activity; a Gramscian tradition highlights civil society as protest activity; and a Habermasian tradition focuses on civil society as public deliberation. My approach assesses civil society in terms of these three modes of citizen action -associational activity, protest activity, and deliberative activity - allowing me to more accurately characterize the levels and variety of activity across Latin America civil societies. This framework helps us understand why characterizations of Latin American civil society vary so substantially in the literature and provides a more integrated way of thinking about and measuring civil society activity.;After assessing levels of civil society activity in the region, I examine the democratic effects of civil society participation on individuals. Civil society theorists contend that participation in civil society has normative democratic effects on the individuals involved. I test this proposition in the context of Latin America by examining the relationship between civil society involvement and two democratic norms: support for democracy and trust. My findings demonstrate that certain forms of civil society activity are substantially more important for strengthening democratic norms in the region than others. I find that protest activity, in particular, has the strongest and most consistent democratic effects across the region. Associational participation has the weakest and least consistently positive democratic effects. My findings thus contradict the neo-Tocquevillian thesis that associational membership is the cornerstone of a democratic civil society in the case of Latin America; and instead demonstrate how protest holds significant potential for encouraging further democratization in the region.;...