Regime Support Beyond the Balance Sheet

Matthew Rhodes-Purdy is a postdoctoral research associate at Washington University, St Louis. He received his Ph.D. in government from the University of Texas, Austin. He is an alumnus of the Fulbright Student Program in Chile. His research interests include legitimacy and regime support, populism, and participatory governance. His work has appeared in Comparative Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Latin American Research Review and Political Studies.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Conceptualizations and existing explanations of regime support; 3. Participatory opportunities, efficacy, and regime support; 4. Attitudinal antecedents of regime support: a statistical analysis; 5. Participatory populism: hegemony, self-governance, and regime support in Bolivarian Venezuela; 6. The other liberalism: laissez-faire, protected democracy, and support in Chile; 7. Conclusion.

'This book offers a bold challenge to conventional thinking about what democracies need to do to generate and maintain public support. Rhodes-Purdy draws from democratic theory and social psychology to argue that citizens expect more than policy effectiveness from their rulers; popular support also depends on opportunities to participate in collective decision-making processes. He employs an impressive array of methodological tools to develop and test his arguments, and his comparative analysis of Chile and Venezuela offers a novel interpretation of highly paradoxical cases. At a time when citizen disenchantment with even well-established democracies seems to be on the rise, Rhodes-Purdy provides a provocative and compelling case for why participation matters.' Kenneth Roberts, Cornell University