Can better civics education restore voter dissatisfaction over political corruption?

According to development economist Enrique Seira Bejarano, dissatisfaction with democracy has been linked to lower levels of support for democratic behaviors in Mexico. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, surveyed over 50,000 Mexican citizens during the 2017 state elections and found that those who were less satisfied with their democracy were less likely to attend poll worker training, staff polling stations, or vote in presidential elections.

Seira and his co-authors suggest that several factors may contribute to citizens losing confidence in their democratic system, including frustration with political gridlock, a decline in the welfare state, the influence of social media, and a perceived increase in corruption. In the United States, support for democracy has declined significantly among younger generations compared to those born in the 1930s.

Another study by Seira and researchers from MIT and Stanford focused on the impact of political corruption on voter turnout in Latin American countries. The researchers found that when high-level politicians were involved in corruption scandals close to election time, voter turnout decreased by 10 to 20 percentage points. The study suggests that when citizens perceive corruption as widespread, they lose trust not only in individual officials but also in the democratic system as a whole.