Inequality, Exclusion, and Tolerance for Political Dissent in Latin America

• Author: Jana Morgan,Nathan J. Kelly
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021997163
• Subject Matter: Articles

2021, Vol. 54(11) 2019 –2051

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021997163

Comparative Political Studies

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414021997163

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Article

Inequality, Exclusion, and

Tolerance for Political

Dissent in Latin America

Jana Morgan1 and Nathan J. Kelly1

Abstract

Although many countries meet electoral standards of democracy,

often these regimes fail to promote social inclusion or meaningful

representation. We argue that systems of exclusion have deleterious

consequences for how people think about democracy, undermining

tolerance for political dissent. Using cross-national public opinion

data together with contextual measures of economic and political

marginalization along ethnoracial lines, we evaluate the relationships

between exclusion and political tolerance across Latin America. Over-

time analysis in Bolivia further probes the mechanisms linking exclusion

to intolerance. We find that tolerance of dissent is depressed where

ethnoracial hierarchies are pronounced. We advance understanding

of oft-unexplained society-level differences in political tolerance and

emphasize the importance of the macro-structural context in shaping

citizens’ commitments to basic democratic rights.

Keywords

democratic values, quality of democracy, race and ethnicity, inequality,

public opinion

1University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jana Morgan, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee, 1001 McClung Tower,

Knoxville, TN 37996-0410, USA.

Email: jana.k.morgan@gmail.com

997163CPSXXX10.1177/0010414021997163Comparative Political StudiesMorgan and Kelly

research-article2021

2020 Comparative Political Studies 54(11)

2 Comparative Political Studies 00(0)

Despite recent democratic erosion, approximately two-thirds of countries

still meet basic electoral standards of democracy (Freedom House, 2018).

While these democracies permit participation through voting, they often fall

short of meaningful political representation and social inclusion. Instead,

powerful economic interests dominate levers of political influence, and social

and economic exclusion persist along well-known axes of marginalization.

In Latin America, democratic rules are commonplace, but deep structural

inequalities remain. Though economic inequality declined across the region

in the early 21st century, this trend has plateaued, leaving intact high levels of

income concentration and the tight link between socioeconomic status and

skin color (Hall & Patrinos, 2012; Morgan & Kelly, 2013; Solt, 2020; Telles,

2014). Latin American parties often neglect the policy interests of marginal-

ized groups in favor of clientelism, and light-skinned elites frequently

monopolize political power (Johnson, 2020a; Luna, 2014; Morgan &

Meléndez, 2017). Beyond Latin America, inequality continues to rise in

many long-standing democracies (Kelly, 2020), racialized patterns of social

immobility persist (Bloome, 2014), anti-immigrant sentiment is widespread

(McLaren, 2012), and governments frequently help the wealthy more than

the poor (Miler, 2018; Witko et al., 2021).

Ideally, democracy would provide citizens a level playing field on which

to exercise fundamental rights (Aslam, 2017; Young, 1990). But systems that

perpetuate social and political hierarchies fail to deliver on this promise.

Instead, exclusionary democracies marginalize certain predictable segments

of society. In doing so, they perpetuate the idea that democracy is not meant

for everyone—a message not lost on the people embedded in systems of

exclusion. In dozens of interviews we conducted across Peru, for instance,

Indigenous and Afro-descendant activists frequently expressed frustration at

the disjuncture between electoral democracy and persistent marginalization.

In one emblematic response, an Indigenous rights advocate lamented: “we

have written [democratic] rules but the ethnoracial hierarchy persists.”1

How do persistent hierarchies shape democratic citizenship for people

who live within them? The implications of exclusion for people’s willingness

to embrace the principles and practices of democracy are undoubtedly far-

reaching and unlikely to be salutary. Here we focus our attention on under-

standing how systems of marginalization may contribute to intolerance of

political dissent.

Political tolerance is essential to the development of democratic societies,

especially in less-established democracies where widespread tolerance has

the capacity to limit acquiescence to illiberal practices, promote stability, and

facilitate free exercise of political rights (Gibson, 1992; Marquart-Pyatt &

Paxton, 2007; Peffley & Rohrschneider, 2003; Sullivan et al., 1982). Tolerance

Morgan and Kelly 2021

Morgan and Kelly 3

of dissent particularly is crucial for those who might hope to level existing

hierarchies. In exclusionary contexts, accomplishing meaningful change may

require dissent from the status quo, and entrenched elites likely prefer skepti-

cism not tolerance of the rights of dissidents who threaten their power.

Despite (and perhaps because of) the role dissent plays in resisting systems of

marginalization, dissidents across Latin America have often been denied

basic political rights, either explicitly during authoritarianism or more subtly

under formal democratic rule. Given the importance of political tolerance

generally and for dissent particularly, it is vital to understand whether sys-

temic marginalization may in fact work to perpetuate intolerance toward the

very voices questioning extant power structures.

We theorize that entrenched exclusion works to undermine tolerance

across societies in two main ways. To begin, political systems that privilege

certain groups and marginalize others send signals to citizens that hearing

divergent perspectives is unimportant and even threatening. These cues

encourage people to devalue political tolerance for dissent. Furthermore,

societies that manifest deeply racialized economic divides reinforce differ-

ence and undermine solidarity, lending legitimacy to the idea that basic

rights need not apply to everyone and thereby sustaining intolerance.

Together these logics, which we elaborate further below, suggest that hierar-

chical political and social systems are likely to be breeding grounds for

intolerance among the mass public.

To assess this possibility, we conduct multilevel analysis of political toler-

ance across Latin America and over time in Bolivia.2 The comparative analy-

sis enables us to evaluate the consequences of racialized hierarchies across a

group of procedural democracies that feature significant cross-national varia-

tion in both political and economic exclusion but share a common logic

underpinning that exclusion. We find that citizens situated in countries with

deeper hierarchies have significantly lower levels of tolerance overall. At the

individual level, white Latin Americans, who often benefit from racialized

hierarchies, are typically more intolerant than their neighbors from marginal-

ized ethnoracial groups. But where racialized economic marginalization is

deepest, tolerance decay is most pronounced among Indigenous people, who

tend to have lower group consciousness and may therefore be especially vul-

nerable to the damaging consequences of oppression. Leveraging temporal

variation in Bolivia offers further evidence of the relationship between sys-

temic marginalization and intolerance and bolsters the claim that strengthen-

ing political inclusion has the capacity to increase tolerance.

By considering how racialized systems of exclusion fuel intolerance, we

advance understanding of this core democratic value and demonstrate how

studies of mass political attitudes can learn from and contribute to literatures