Browsing by Author "Bargsted, Matias"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    A longitudinal examination of the factors that facilitate and hinder support for conservative and progressive social movements
    (2022) Gonzalez, Roberto; Chayinska, Maria; Plaza, Alejandro; Bargsted, Matias; Miranda, Daniel
    This paper examines social-psychological factors that can facilitate and hinder public support for conservative agendas over time. Using four waves of longitudinal panel data from Chile (N = 2,394), we estimated the between-person and within-person associations among individuals' self-reported conservative ideologies, political disaffection, civic behaviour, political attitudes towards democracy and social change, and their support for conservative (vs progressive) social movements over time. As expected, between-person increases in social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), right-wing self-categorization, and political disaffection correlated positively with support for conservative social movements. Between-person increases in people's social change beliefs, support for democracy, and civic participation predicted less support for conservative social movements over time. Within-person increases in RWA and SDO correlated positively with conservative social movement support, whereas civic participation correlated negatively with it. Results provide novel evidence for the dynamic processes underlying support for conservative/progressive agendas.
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    Corruption and Political Knowledge Erosion. A Cautionary Tale from Latin America
    (OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2022) Bargsted, Matias; Bachmann, Ingrid; Valenzuela, Sebastian
    Previous research has shown that corruption diminishes citizens' level of political support and engagement. We extend this line of reasoning and evaluate whether previous levels of perceived corruption can influence subsequent levels of political knowledge. We test this proposition with data from a two-wave panel probability survey applied in Chile between 2016 and 2017, just after a 2-year period in which an avalanche of corruption scandals shook the country. Our estimates confirm that perceived corruption reduces subsequent political knowledge, while controlling for prior knowledge. This pattern is particularly strong among non-ideologues and people ideologically distant from the incumbent government. Given the status of political knowledge as a democratically valuable trait, our results uncover some normatively disturbing consequences of corruption.
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    Social and Political Trust in a Low Trust Society
    (2023) Bargsted, Matias; Ortiz, Camila; Caceres, Ignacio; Somma, Nicolas M.
    We study the causal relationship between social and political trust in a low trust society, a setting where this topic has received very little attention. We focus on contemporary Chile, a relatively consolidated new democracy lacking many of the conditions that fosters trust such as high socioeconomic equality, weak social divisions, or universal welfare policies. Our empirical analysis is based on a 4-wave panel survey applied to a representative sample of 2000 Chilean adults interviewed face to face each year between 2016 and 2019. Based on statistical models with varying specifications and assumptions, we find support for the institutionalist view that claims that political trust exercises a positive influence over social trust. However, contrary to recent findings for some European democracies (Sonderskov & Dinesen 2016, Seifert 2018), we also find that social trust positively affects political trust. Our results suggest that the positive relationship between both types of trust travels to different political settings, and that there is no minimum threshold required in levels of trust for this relationship to emerge.
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    Social trust and the winner-loser gap
    (2024) Bargsted, Matias; Gonzalez-Ide, Andres
    The electoral winner-loser gap literature has shown sharp differences between citizens who vote for winning and losing options in key indicators of political support. In this article, we claim that the influence of election results can extend beyond the political domain and reach citizens' level of social trust. Indeed, elections can reveal to citizens who voted for the winning option that their preferences are aligned with the majority opinion of society, while it signals the opposite to electoral losers. We hypothesize that this contrast will trigger a gap in the level of social trust between winners and losers, and that this gap will be larger among politically engaged voters relative to those more disinterested in political affairs. To contrast our hypotheses, we conducted two online panel surveys with a pre-post electoral design during two recent elections in Chile. Estimates from Two-way Fixed Effects regression models support our main theoretical expectations.