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Classic theories of public opinion suggest that negative shocks can undermine system support in weak democracies, but scant work has systematically assessed this thesis. We identify Peru's explosive Vacuna-gate scandal as a most-likely case for finding a connection between corruption and political support. The scandal's unexpected revelation in the middle of the 2021 AmericasBarometer Peru survey created conditions for a natural experiment. Applying an unexpected-event-during-survey design, we consider the consequences of the scandal for perceptions of corruption, system support, and support for democracy. We find robust evidence that the scandal increased even already high perceptions of corruption and lowered system support. Contrary to expectations derived from prior theories, we find no effect on explicit support for democracy. In the conclusion, we discuss the nuanced ways that scandal may shape democratic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors combine elite and mass survey data to create indicators of representation for nine nations: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay. For the first time, a quantified measure of the extent to which political parties represent voters' policy preferences in these countries is offered. The authors then examine the political, social, and economic correlates of representation. Consistent with extant literature and theory, they find that party system institutionalization and socioeconomic development are positively related to representation. On the other hand, drastic liberalization efforts seem to be associated with lower levels of representation. Furthermore, the authors find that leftist parties contribute to the representative structures of political systems. They also find that perceptions of fraud in an electoral system are correlated at a fairly high level with the indicator of representation: Citizens' subjective perceptions of a system are consistent with its reality. Keywords: Latin America; representation; democracy; issue congruence; ideology; clientelism

Menacing news inclines individuals to acquire information, and research has explored how emotional reactions such as fear or anger condition this process. While scholars have debated the relevance of fear and anger for levels of attentiveness and learning in politics, fewer studies consider how variation in emotional responses can shape the substance of information searches in times of threat. We posit that heightened fear motivates interest in defense-oriented information among threatened individuals, while heightened anger motivates interest in aggression-oriented information. To test these hypotheses, we focus on international terrorist threat because of its known tendency to elevate both anger and fear. We use data that permit a behavioral measure of information seeking, via an experiment embedded within a Dynamic Process Tracing Environment (DPTE) platform. Within this information-rich context, exposure to terrorist threat motivates a search for relevant information. Furthermore, we find that while an induction to elevate anger prompts more immediate attention to aggression-oriented information, an induction to elevate fear is more effective in steering attention toward defense-oriented information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]