Insecure Democracy: Risk and Political Participation in Brazil

In recent decades, developing countries around the world have undergone dual transitions to democracy and more open markets. Such reforms often have coincided with the retrenchment of state-sponsored social insurance, even as unemployment, crime, and informality have risen. This article examines how insecurity associated with lack of adequate protection against the risks of income loss and violent crime affects patterns of political engagement in Brazil. Although it is often assumed that insecurity is mobilizing, analysis of an original household survey reveals that those lacking the means to ensure against livelihood risks are systematically more likely to forbear from active political participation. Insecurity and poverty, moreover, reveal divergent effects on political participation, wherein it is not the poorest, but rather the most insecure citizens who are most likely to forbear from active citizenship. Emerging democracies thus may be more deeply riven by cleavages of insecurity than by income when it comes to the question of whose voice is heard in democratic politics.