Recent research on the theme of political trust has pointed to a situation of significant disbelief in major institutuions on the part of citizens of Western democracies. Among the different explanations that have been provided for this serious phenomenon, the thesis that associates it with a process of cultural change leading to the establishment of a more critical citizenry - and thus, a new Standard in the relations between individuals and the political system - has gained credence. Although satisfactorily tested in democracies with long and relatively consolidated traditions, some critics have pointed to the explanatory fragility of this hypothesis in the case of younger democracies, in which the a more convincing explanation makes reference to citizens' disenchantment with the concrete ways in which the institutions of the political system work. In this paper, we deal with this polemic by testing these hypotheses in the Latin American context, researching the individual determinants of political distrust. Using data produced by the World Values Survey Project in the three phases in which it was applied within the region, we make an initial analysis of the recent evolution of some indicators and follow up with a model that confronts the different explanations that have been given for the same phenomenon.
Political Distrust; Democracy; Disenchantment; Latin America
