Novos atores, velhas atitudes? : análise do efeito geracional no apoio à democracia e na participação política dos brasileiros

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to analyze how the generational effect manifests in two political attitudes of Brazilians—support for democracy and political participation—between 2000 and 2020, encompassing individuals socialized from the Vargas Era to the New Republic. Numerous studies in Political Science have examined the role of age and generations in shaping individuals' political attitudes. The central argument highlights the role of socialization and context. That is, people socialized in specific historical-social periods, and who therefore constitute a cohort, may assimilate and reproduce particular political behaviors. However, there are not many studies that specifically analyze the effects of generational change in the Brazilian context, considering the country’s political, economic, and cultural history. Furthermore, some theoretical issues have not been assessed in previous studies, such as the generational effect on: (i) support for procedural democracy; and (ii) willingness to participate politically, both conventionally and unconventionally, over the past twenty years. Thus, this thesis aims to contribute to this research agenda and address existing gaps. To achieve the general objective, data from the Latinobarómetro and the World Values Survey from 2000 to 2020 will be analyzed. The data indicate the existence of generational, life cycle, and period effects on the investigated political attitudes. The results showed that there is a generational effect on support for the democratic regime: one of the older political generations, who lived their formative years during the Populist Republic (1946 to 1964), expressed greater support for democracy than the younger political generations (the Military Dictatorship cohort with a negative trend and the New Republic cohort with no significance). A life-cycle effect was found through the tendency of disengagement among young people in most forms of political participation and their lower inclination to support democracy. Additionally, a period effect was observed, which acted positively and negatively depending on the political attitude tested (support for democracy, conventional participation, and non-conventional activism).