Explaining political cynicism in a non-Western context: the case of Guyana

Political cynicism is generally accompanied by a retreat from politics and is thought to have important consequences for democracy. This paper investigates antecedents of political cynicism by applying structural equations modeling to survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of Guyanese. It confirms that political cynicism is correlated with but distinct from general cynicism and finds that demographic variables, socioeconomic status, general cynicism, ideological orientations, political attitudes and feelings of resentment jointly explain approximately 41.9% of the variance in a main political cynicism construct and 14.2% of the variance in perceived incompetence of politicians. Among the variables, political attitudes are the most important predictors of political cynicism and beliefs about inequality in the category of ideology is relevant to explaining political cynicism. Political cynics in Guyana are more likely to be younger persons with less than university education and who live in rural and hinterland areas. Though it is reassuring that education is an antidote, the education threshold is high, and it appears that political cynics have indeed withdrawn from politics.