Civic Education, Civil Society, and Political Mistrust in ...stevenfinkel.com/files/Finkel Sabatini...

Civic Education, Civil Society, and Political Mistrust

in a Developing Democracy: The Case of the

Dominican Republic

STEVE E. FINKELUniversity of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA

CHRISTOPHER A. SABATININational Endowment for Democracy, Washington, DC, USA

and

GWENDOLYN G. BEVIS *

University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

Summary. Ð The paper explores the e�ect of donor-supported civic education programs on levelsof citizen trust in institutions in the Dominican Republic. Using attitudinal surveys of control andtreatment groups the paper demonstrates that civic education had a direct, negative e�ect onparticipantsÕ levels of institutional trust, with the greatest negative e�ects on trust in governmentalbodies such as the army and the judicial system. The paper argues that this stems from the type ofgroups that conduct civic education in democratizing countries, many of which are not politicallyor socially neutral. The paper concludes with a discussion of these ®ndings for theories ofdemocracy and civil society and for donor-supported civic education programs. Ó 2000 ElsevierScience Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key words Ð Latin America, Dominican Republic, democracy, civic education, trust, civil society

1. INTRODUCTION

For the past several decades, the UnitedStates and many European countries havedevoted considerable resources to promotingdemocratic assistance and strengthening civilsociety in emerging democracies around theworld (Carothers, 1997; Diamond, 1995;Quigley 1997). Many of these activities aredirected explicitly at promoting support fordemocratic norms and values among ordinarycitizens. These e�orts often referred to as civiceducation programs range from the adoption ofnew curricula in primary and secondary schoolsto teach young people about democracy, toprograms that provide instruction about thesocial and political rights of women, to votereducation programs, and to neighborhoodproblem-solving programs that bring individu-als in contact with local authorities for purpo-

ses of promoting collective action to bene®tlocal communities. In 1994, the US Agency forInternational Development alone spent over 23million dollars on civic education.

As the amount of civic education hasincreased, so too has interest in the e�ects ofthese programs on individuals in developingdemocracies. Several evaluations of adult-basedcivic education have been conducted in recent

World Development Vol. 28, No. 11, pp. 1851±1874, 2000Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Printed in Great Britain0305-750X/00/$ - see front matter

PII: S0305-750X(00)00067-Xwww.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

* This study is part of a larger project evaluating civic

education programs initiated by USAIDÕs Center for

Democracy and Governance and conducted by Manage-

ment Systems International, Inc. The authors thank

Lynn Carter, Sheryl Stumbras, Roberta Warren, Gary

Hansen, Jerry Hyman, Jennifer Windsor, Neil Nevitte,

Tom Carothers, Martha Kropf, and the two anonymous

reviewers all of whom constructive comments and

criticisms. Final revision accepted: 3 April 2000.

1851

years (Bratton, Alderfer, Bowser, & Tamba,1999; Sabatini, Finkel, & Bevis, 1998) workingfrom a de®nition of ``civic education'' as the``development of citizenship or civic compe-tence [through] conveying the unique meaning,obligation, and virtue of citizenship in aparticular society or the acquisition of values,dispositions, and skills appropriate to thatsociety'' (International Encyclopedia of Educa-tion, 2nd ed., Vol. 7, p. 767), these researchershave sought to determine whether civic educa-tion leads to increases in a series of well-knownpolitical attitudes, dispositions, and values. Theassumption that guides these assessments (andthe programs) is that individuals in democraticsocieties should have relatively high levels of``civic competence,'' including knowledgeabout the political system and its leaders, civicskills, and perceptions of political in¯uence ore�cacy (Barnes & Kaase, 1979; Delli Carpini,& Keeter, 1996; Verba & Nie, 1972; Verba,Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). Individuals shouldalso endorse values such as political tolerance,support for political liberty, and interpersonaltrust, all of which have been hypothesized tosustain democratic governance (Gibson, Duch,& Tedin, 1992; Putnam, 1993, 1995; Almond &Verba, 1963). In addition, democratic individ-uals should be relatively participatory, votingin national and local elections and otherwisemaking their demands known to political elitesthrough appropriate (i.e. nonviolent and legallysanctioned) channels. With some interestingcrossnational and programmatic variations, thestudies have found that civic education canhave signi®cant, though not overwhelminglylarge, e�ects on most democratic orientations,and on voting and other forms of politicalparticipation.

The goals of civic education both in theoryand practice, however, are less clear for anotherimportant orientation, the individualÕs trust orcon®dence in existing political institutions. Incontrast to the consensual view that more e�-cacy, more tolerance, and more interpersonaltrust are unequivocally good for democraticdevelopment, it is by no means evident thatmore institutional trust is necessarily a desir-able democratic outcome. Some scholarsbemoan the increasingly low levels of institu-tional trust seen in the United States over thepast several decades (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse,1995; Nye, Zelikow, & King, 1997; Lipset &Schneider, 1983), arguing that the withdrawalof public trust hampers the ability of thegovernment to enact necessary public policies

and respond to public demands. Others notethat institutional trust has a direct and positivee�ect on support for democracy as a form ofgovernment, and hence that high levels of trustwill promote the stability of democratic regimes(Rose, Mishler, & Haerpfer, 1998). Given theshaky levels of popular legitimacy in manydeveloping democracies, and the relatively lowlevels of policy responsiveness of previousregimes, it may be argued that the role of civiceducation should be to increase institutionaltrust in order to promote more e�ectivedemocratic governance.

At the same time, it is commonplace to arguethat democracy requires some degree of distrustor skepticism on the part of the citizenry.Gibson et al. (1992, p. 232), for example, de®nethe democratic citizen in part as one who``holds a certain amount of distrust of politicalauthority. . .who is obedient but nonethelesswilling to assert rights against the state.''Mishler and Rose (1997, pp. 418±419) agree,stating that ``[n]o government enjoys the abso-lute trust of its citizens; arguably, noneshould,'' and that ``excessive trust cultivatespolitical apathy and encourages a loss of citizenvigilance and control of government, both ofwhich undermine democracy.'' On this view,the problem in democratizing systems is tocreate a healthy skepticism about institutions sothat political elites are held accountable andcivil society is strengthened vis-�a-vis the state.Thus we may wish that civic education, inpromoting a more democratic political culture,should negatively in¯uence the citizenryÕs insti-tutional trust. This may be particularly impor-tant in the case of institutions that indeveloping democracies have been linked todemocratic overthrow, such as the armedforces.

Similarly, in donor-supported civic educationprograms the question of citizen trust ingovernment is often ambiguous. While theexplicit goal of any civic education program isto promote the legitimacy of democratic formsof government, it is unclear whether civic edu-cation should or does promote increased trustof the government and extant nominallydemocratic institutions, such as the parliamentor the judiciary, or increased levels of skepti-cism of the state, including existing democraticinstitutions.

We explore the relationship between civiceducation and institutional trust by examiningfour adult-based civic education programs thatwere conducted in the Dominican Republic

WORLD DEVELOPMENT1852

during 1994±97. We ®rst describe the alterna-tive mechanisms which may lead to eitherpositive or negative e�ects of civic education oninstitutional trust, showing that each of theproposed e�ects corresponds to a particularview of the role of civil society in a democraticpolitical system. We then discuss the politicaland economic situation in the DominicanRepublic at the time of the surveys, arguingthat the objective performance of the ¯edglingdemocratic regime was extremely poor andunlikely to generate widespread citizen con®-dence. We then demonstrate that the e�ect ofcivic education on institutional trust was over-whelmingly negative: individuals who wereexposed to civic education programs had, onaverage, con®dence in up to one fewer politicalinstitution out of seven than individuals in thecontrol group. These e�ects remained afterdemographic and other attitudinal controls wereintroduced in the analysis, suggesting that civiceducation has a moderately strong, direct,negative e�ect on institutional trust. Further, we®nd that civic education a�ects the way thatindividuals structure their attitudes about insti-tutions, with civic education respondents beingmore likely to di�erentiate governmental bodiessuch as parliament and the judiciary fromnongovernmental institutions such as the churchor the educational system. We argue that civiceducation in the Dominican Republic appears toresult fromÐand to promoteÐwhat recentlyhas been termed ``Civil Society II'' (Foley andEdwards, 1996), a view of civil society as anindependent and necessary counterweight to thepotential abuses of the state. We discuss theimplications of these ®ndings for theories oftrust and democratic consolidation, and formore practical considerations in the implemen-tation of future civic education programs.

2. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVICEDUCATION AND INSTITUTIONAL

TRUST: ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESES

Political scientists have long been interestedin the levels and sources of institutional trust indemocratic political systems (e.g., Easton, 1965;Eckstein, 1966; Gamson, 1968). In recent years,however, the topic has generated even greaterinterest. Some of this increased concern hasbeen the result of political scientistsÕ attemptsto understand the consequences of the ``thirdwave'' of democratization that swept LatinAmerica and the former Soviet bloc in the

1980s and early 1990s, and to understand thesources of public con®dence in these newregimes (Mishler & Rose, 1997; Rose et al.,1998; Finifter & Mickiewicz, 1992; Seligson &Booth, 1993). In addition, some of theincreased concern has been in response to thein¯uential arguments of Robert Putnam who,in a series of works in the mid-1990s, arguedforcefully for the importance of ``social capi-tal''Ðinterpersonal trust rooted in ``densenetworks'' of civic engagementÐin under-standing the successful functioning and stabil-ity of democratic governments (Putnam 1993,1995). Some of the concern has been the resultof attempts to understand the causes andconsequences of the precipitous drop in insti-tutional trust seen in the United States andseveral other industrialized democracies sincethe 1970s (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 1995;Listhaug & Wiberg, 1995; Nye et al., 1997;Hetherington, 1998).

As a result of this resurgence of research, thesources of institutional trust in democraticsystems have become increasingly, though stillimperfectly, understood. By far the mostimportant variables in¯uencing levels of trustare the economic and political performance ofthe institutions themselves. As regimes deliver(and individuals perceive that they deliver)superior economic outputs and provideincreased democratic freedoms, reducedcorruption and peaceful alterations of powerwithin a democratic electoral framework, thelevel of public trust in the institutions ofgovernment increases dramatically (Evans &White®eld, 1995; Mishler & Rose, 1997; Roseet al., 1998; Weil, 1989, 1993). Also importantare individualsÕ comparisons of the currentdemocratic regime to previous authoritarian orcommunist systemsÐthe more individuals rejectthe philosophical underpinnings and the actualpractice of previous regimes, the more likely theyare to embrace democratic alternatives (Rose &Mishler, 1994; Dalton, 1994; Weil, 1996).

In contrast to the e�ects of these perfor-mance-oriented variables, factors relating topolitical culture and social-structural locationappear to be weaker and inconsistent predictorsof trust. Following Putnam, as well as earlierarguments by Almond and Verba (1963), somescholars have found that interpersonal trust haspositive e�ects on institutional con®dence(Brehm & Rahn, 1997; Martin & Claibourn,1998). Others show that e�cacious individualsare likely to be more trusting of institutions aswell (Abramson, 1983; Hibbing & Theiss-Morse,

CIVIC EDUCATION AND POLITICAL MISTRUST 1853

1995; Listhaug & Wiberg, 1995). The e�ect ofassociational memberships on institutional trustis inconsistent, with most studies ®nding eitherweak or no e�ects (Brehm & Rahn, 1997; Martin& Claibourn, 1998). Similarly, some studies havefound positive e�ects of education and incomeon trust (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 1995;Abramson, 1983) while others have foundnegative (D�oring, 1992) or nonexistent rela-tionships. Similar weak and sometimes incon-sistent e�ects are found in analyses of otherdemographic factors such as age, gender, andchurch attendance. Clearly, the dominant in¯u-ences on trust are the regimeÕs political andeconomic performance, with smaller e�ects fromindividualsÕ rejection of the legacy of previousregimes and their adherence to supportive valuesand norms such as interpersonal trust andpolitical e�cacy.

How might exposure to civic educationtraining activateÐor supplementÐthese in¯u-ences on institutional trust? We hypothesizethat certain causal processes should lead indi-viduals exposed to civic education to becomemore trusting of democratic institutions, whileother processes may lead to decreased levels oftrust. These alternative processes, moreover,correspond well to the two normative views ofthe goals of civic education: the positive e�ectsmay result from greater acceptance of democ-racy and supportive democratic values, whilethe negative e�ects may result from heightenedawareness of current economic and politicalperformance, and a felt need for civil societygroups and individuals to hold elites account-able and prevent abuses of political power.

There are several reasons to expect positivee�ects of civic education on institutional trust.First, to the extent that civic education isdesigned to expose participants to the contrastsbetween democratic and authoritarian orcommunist political systemsÐand to preachthe advantages of democracyÐ, we may expectthat such programs will intensify the individ-ualÕs rejection of the previous political regimeand thus enhance support for current demo-cratic institutions. Following similar logic, civiceducation may sharpen the distinctionsbetween more democratic and more authori-tarian institutions within a country at a giventime, resulting in increased trust in those insti-tutions that embody more democratic princi-ples. Second, to the extent that civic educationhas positive e�ects on certain democratic normsand values, these may spill over onto moregeneral evaluations of existing democratic

institutions. In particular, civic education mayserve as a partial counterweight to the politicalculture of personal mistrust that is endemic toauthoritarian and communist societies, and associal trust increases, increased levels of insti-tutional trust may follow. Similarly, as civiceducation has been found to enhance the indi-vidualÕs sense of e�cacy or in¯uence in thepolitical system (Finkel et al., 1998), this shouldlead to positive indirect e�ects on institutionaltrust as well.

There are equally compelling reasons,however, to expect that exposure to civic edu-cation may decrease trust in democratic insti-tutions. As noted above, the most powerfule�ects on individualsÕ institutional evaluationsare perceptions of economic and politicalperformance. Most developing democraciesare, at least for a signi®cant period after theregime change, beset with serious economic andpolitical problems, among them rising prices,inability to meet citizen demands, ongoingcorruption, and the like (Haggard & Kaufman,1992; Diamond & Linz, 1989). Civic educationmay heighten performance-based dissatisfac-tion with the political system in several ways.First, to the extent that civic education increa-ses the individualÕs general political awareness,people who are exposed to civic education willbe more likely to know about a countryÕscurrent economic and political problems.Second, many civic education programs aredesigned speci®cally to bring participants intocontact with governmental o�cials and todevise ways for ordinary citizens and leaders towork together to solve community and nationalproblems. Yet exposure to these programs mayeasily invite increased cynicism, as individualsmay be brought into contact with unresponsivelocal o�cials or otherwise may become awareof the intransigent nature of many social andpolitical problems. Third, in contrast to thepositive ``spill-over'' e�ect of e�cacy anddemocratic norms on trust discussed above, it isaltogether possible that increases in e�cacy anddemocratic values may be associated with lowerlevels of institutional trust, as individuals cometo realize through civic education that thesystem is not living up to the ideals of demo-cratic governance. If this hypothesis is true,then civic educationÕs success in inculcatingother democratic values mayÐat least in theshort-termÐproduce less positive by-productsin terms of institutional evaluations.

To summarize: if civic education has positivee�ects on institutional trust, we expect those


e�ects to operate through the individualÕsrejection of previous anti-democratic regimesand through a positive spill-over e�ect fromincreased e�cacy, interpersonal trust, andother supportive democratic values. If civiceducation has negative e�ects on trust, weexpect the e�ects to operate through increasedawareness of poor system performance,through an increased sense of the unrespon-siveness of local political elites, and through aheightened perception of the gaps betweendemocratic ideals and current political prac-tices. It is also possible that some e�ects in bothdirections will take place, in which case the nete�ect of civic education on institutional trustmay be negligible. Finally, some of the e�ectsmay be spurious, in that individuals who areexposed to civic education training may alsodi�er in important ways from the generalpopulation. Controlling for prior involvementin civil society, education, income and otherpotentially relevant demographic and politicalfactors will be essential in order to ascertain theindependent e�ect of civic education in theanalysis to follow.

3. THE RESEARCH SETTING: THEDOMINICAN REPUBLIC IN THE MID TO

LATE 1990S

The study examines the e�ects of four USAgency for International Development(USAID) civic education programs conductedin the Dominican Republic in the mid- to late1990s. The Dominican Republic was selectedfor several reasons, notably the scope of itscivic education e�orts since the early 1990s andthe relative ease of data collection due to thesmall size of the country. Equally important,the country was coming out of period of semi-authoritarianism and a�orded an excellentopportunity to assess the e�ects of civic edu-cation during a particular kind of politicaltransition. We describe brie¯y the politicalcontext in which the four civic educationprograms operated, highlighting in particularthose aspects of the political and economicsituation that had the most relevance forassessments of institutional trust.

The Dominican Republic has operatedformally under democratic institutions andprocesses since the late 1970s (elections, electedgovernments, and de jure separation ofpowers). Despite the trappings of democraticgovernment, however, the Dominican state has

been better characterized by a combination ofarbitrary, personalistic, corrupt rule thatHartlyn (1998) has termed ``neo-sultanism.''Real power during 1978±96 was concentratedin a personalized presidency under Joaqu�õnBalaguer, with key political and economicdecisions often made without the input of theCongress or checks by the judiciary (Espinal,1996). Moreover, BalaguerÕs party, the SocialChristian Reformist Party (PRSC), controlled amajority of seats in the Congress, enablingBalaguer to ®ll the courts with political cronies.Packing of the courts was combined withwoefully inadequate funding for the judicialsystem, the poor preparation for judicial o�-cials and well-acknowledged corruption of thecourt system, making the justice system politi-cized and ine�cient (Espinal, 1996, pp. 128±129).

Since 1978 elections had been highly disputedin the Dominican Republic, and it was in themidst of one of the most charged moments ofelectoral controversy that the four civic edu-cation programs that we examined were initi-ated. Balaguer won the presidential elections in1994 with a slim 0.7% of the vote. Immediatelyafter the elections, the opposing politicalparties charged electoral fraud, pointing, inparticular, to the irregularities in the electoralregistries that had prevented a signi®cantnumber of voters (allegedly supporters of theopposition) from casting their ballots on elec-tion day. International election observationteams from the Organization of AmericanStates, the National Democratic Institute, andthe International Foundation for ElectionSystems also cited cases of electoral fraud andquestioned the legitimacy of the elections. Thecharges prompted an internal investigation bythe Dominican electoral commission (JCE)which concluded that discrepancies did indeedexist, but did not assess the extent to which theyhad taken place or if they had been su�cient toin¯uence the outcome of the elections. In spiteof its own report, the JCE sanctioned theresults of the elections, and Balaguer wasinaugurated president on August 2, 1994.

The general sentiment of Dominican citizenswas that the election had been stolen, andpublic disgust provoked a backlash within civilsociety against the election. International anddomestic forces pressured for a resolution towhat appeared to be a mounting crisis. After aseries of negotiations between oppositionparties, civil society (most prominentlythe Catholic Church) and the government,


President Balaguer signed the Pact for Democ-racy on August 10, 1994. In the pact, amongother constitutional reforms, Balaguer agreed toshorten his term to two years, at which time anew presidential election would be held in whichhe would be banned from competing.

In the two years between the 1994 and 1996elections, a number of political and economicscandals surfaced that reinforced the publicÕsnegative perception of the corruption of theDominican government. In reaction to theheightened popular opposition, the governmentinitially responded with repression, harassingpolitical opponents, tapping phone lines andtightening state security. Government repres-sion was coupled with increased revelations ofstate corruption and economic failures. TheDominican media alleged the corruption of anumber of BalaguerÕs inner circle of advisors.During this time, the extent of economic lossesand the deterioration of several prominent stateeconomic holdings also became public. In 1995,10 of the 23 companies in the state holdingcompany CORDE were closed, and it wasrevealed that the state sugar company and stateelectrical company were operating at a loss.The revelations served as a sharp and costlyreminder of the ine�ciency and corruptionfrom BalaguerÕs term in o�ce and increased thepublicÕs perception of civil society as anunsoiled alternative to the crisis of government(Hartlyn, 1998, pp. 211±212).

As the 1996 elections approached, rumorspersisted that President Balaguer would fail tohonor the promises in the pact. Stories circu-lated that the aging president planned to use anexcuse to foreclose the elections or overturn theresults in order to hold on to power. Therumors proved false, and in 1996 oppositionpolitician Leonel Fernandez of the DemocraticLiberation Party (PLD), with the support ofBalaguer and the PRSC, won the run-o� elec-tions. For many observers, the inauguration ofFernandez raised hopes of a new democratictransition in the Dominican Republic and theinstitutionalization of a democratic regime.

4. PROGRAMS STUDIED

It was in this environment that the fourgroups in our study conducted their civic edu-cation programs: economic disarray, doubtsabout whether a transition of power wouldactually take place, public revelations of wide-spread corruption and cronyism, and fragile

hopes for the emergence of a more democraticpolitical system. The study examined fourprograms that conducted civic educationprograms during 1994±97. They were selectedbecause of the variation of their methods,subject matters, and target populations. All ofthe programs were directed to adults (for recentstudies on student civic education, see Niemi &Junn, 1998; Slomczynski & Shabad, 1998;Remy & Strzemieczny, 1996).

The ®rst of the programs studied wasconducted by a national elections-oriented non-governmental organization, Participaci�on Ciu-dadana (PC). For the 1996 presidential elec-tions, PC created another group, called La Redde los Observadores Electorales, to organize andtrain youth and adults to serve as electionobservers in 1996 and to conduct a quick countof the vote. The program ran from 1995 to mid-1996, although PC activities continued into1997, still focused on elections. (Of those in thesample 14% of the respondents were exposed toPC and Red training sessions but did noteventually work as election observers.)

The second program was conducted by anewly formed nongovernmental organization,Grupo Accion por la Democracia (GAD). Theprogram was conducted in two phases, with the®rst phase dedicated to a general educationalprogram concerning basic political rights andobligations in a democracy, primarily througha lecture format. The second phase broughtthese people together to hold a series ofnational and local issues fora to discuss prob-lems and solutions in speci®c policy areas, suchas justice, health, and education. Localgovernment authorities attended these fora aswell. The two phases were intended to create anational nongovernmental organization(NGO) with a network of local branchesoutside of Santo Domingo and to mobilizecitizens to participate in these new structures.The program ran from November 1995 toOctober 1996.

The third program was part of a largercommunity ®nance and small business develop-ment program for women conducted through awomenÕs small business NGO, Asociaci�onDominicana para el Desarrollo de la Mujer(ADOPEM). The program trained womencommunity leaders in women's rights, demo-cratic values, democracy in the family, and self-esteem, using a classroom/workshop format,and ran from January 1996 to January 1997.

The fourth program studied was conductedby a local NGO a�liated with a local radio


station in La Vega, Radio Santa Mar�õa (RSM).The project trained intermediaries (typicallyleaders of rural towns) who then conductedcivic education in their local communities. Thesubject matter focused on civic knowledge andvalues, such as rights and duties in a democ-racy, the importance of participation, anddemocracy in the family. For the directparticipants (trainers) the program used mate-rials distribution, lectures, forums and drama-tizations; for indirect participants the programrelied on lectures and materials distribution.RSM ran two consecutive projects, over 1994±95 and from 1995 to December 1996.

5. DATA AND MEASUREMENT 1

We administered a questionnaire to a repre-sentative sample of individuals who hadparticipated in each of the civic educationprograms under study (a treatment group) anda representative sample of individuals who hadnot participated (a control group). In all of theprograms except Radio Santa Maria, treatmentsamples were drawn from lists of participantsprovided by the implementing organizations.For the Radio Santa Maria program, only listsof the ``leaders'' or ®rst-stage participants weremaintained, and we obtained names of ordi-nary participants through ``snowball'' samplingmethods from interviews with the ®rst-stageparticipants.

Our strategy for obtaining appropriatecontrol samples was to select nonparticipants atrandom in each of the regions where theprograms were conducted. We began with anational strati®ed random sample of 50municipalities, as the PC program operatednationwide, and GAD operated in all areasexcept for Santo Domingo, the countryÕs capi-tal. Individuals were selected for inclusion inthe sample in proportion to the population ofthe selected municipality. We then supple-mented this sample with an oversample ofindividuals in La Vega, where the Radio SantaMaria program operated, and women in thefour areas where ADOPEM conducted itstraining. Table 1 summarizes the participantand control samples for each of the fourprograms.

The in-country survey was conducted by theInstituto de Estudios de Poblaci�on y Desarrollo(IEPD), the statistical o�ce a�liated withPROFAMILIA. Response rate for the surveywas an excellent 90.5%, with 98% response forthe participant sample and 83.7% response forthe control group. Due to the lack of appro-priate census-type data, it is impossible toassess de®nitively the representativeness of thesample, but the age, educational level, andmarital status of our control sample closelyresemble the levels seen in the 1993 DEMOSsurvey conducted on behalf of USAID, whichat the time represented the last o�cial survey ofpolitical values of the Dominican Republicpopulation before the current study.

Table 1. Treatment and control samples for the four civic education programs

Treatment

Project name Location Size How sampled

Participaci�on Ciudadana National 250 Random, from listsGAD National(except Santo Domingo) 247 Random, from listsADOPEM La Vega, San Pedro de Macoris,

San Cristobal, Herrera, SabanaPerdida

201 Random, from lists

Radio Santa Maria (direct) La Vega 152 Random, from listsRadio Santa Maria (indirect) La Vega 153 Snowball from RSM-

Direct participants

Control

Location Size How sampled

National 695 Random strati®edLa Vega 189 Random

San Pedro de Macoris 50 RandomSan Cristobal 50 Random

Herrera 50 RandomSabana Perdida 50 Random


6. MEASUREMENT

(a) Institutional trust

We measured institutional trust and a varietyof demographic and political orientations usingstandard items used in past survey-baseddemocratic values research. We measured trustby asking people to rate whether they had``much,'' ``little'', or ``no'' trust (conf�õa inSpanish) in the following institutions: Judi-ciary, Mass Media, Church, Armed Forces,Parliament, Local O�cials, Police, PoliticalSystem, Educational System, and the BusinessCommunity. In the results section below, wediscuss how we combined these items into asingle scale for subsequent regression analyses.

(b) Political orientations

We measured a series of political orientationsbased on our hypotheses above regarding thepotentially intervening mechanisms betweencivic education and institutional trust. Theyare: Political Knowledge; Rights Knowledge;Civic Skills; General E�cacy; Local O�cialResponsiveness; Support for DemocraticLiberty; Paternalism; and Social Trust. Adescription of questions and scale constructionis included in Appendix A.

(c) Demographic and other control variables

We controlled for a variety of demographicin¯uences on democratic values and politicalparticipation, including education, income, age,gender, place of residence, and time lived in thecommunity. Aside from adding to the explan-atory power of the equations, including thesefactors begins to control for the fact that thecivic education programs we analyzed tendedto train certain kinds of individuals who mayalready have been higher or lower on institu-tional trust than individuals in the controlgroups. As will be seen below, participantstended to be younger and have relatively higherlevels of education and income than the controlgroups, immediately raising the possibility thatthe observed e�ects of civic education would bespurious without taking these factors intoaccount.

In addition, in its early ®eld research theteam discovered that many of the adultprograms in the Dominican Republic usedexisting networks in civil society to recruitparticipants into civic education activities. This

again raised potential problems of selectionbias. For that reason, we needed to be able tocontrol for people's previous participation incivil society, to be sure that the e�ects foundwere the result of civic education and not ofparticipation in civil society before theprogram. To address this, we also controlledfor membership in a wide variety of voluntaryassociations, such as peasant associations,community groups, unions, church groups andthe like.

Yet even after taking demographic factorsand organizational memberships into account,we may still not have eliminated all of thepotential biases due to self-selection. Indeed, itmay have been the case that individuals withinall of these demographic groups who foundtheir way into the treatment groups were alsothose whoÐfor some unknown or unmeasuredreasonÐpossessed higher or lower levels oftrust. As a partial corrective to this problem, weincluded two additional variables as controls,the individualÕs reported interest in politics andattention to the mass media, reasoning thatthese factors are good measures of an individ-ualÕs overall political awareness and sophisti-cation, and hence may serve as a proxy for theindividualÕs prior attachment to democraticnorms. One possible drawback to this strategyis that our estimates of treatment e�ects may beattenuated if civic education has a causal e�ecton interest and media use; in that case wewould be controlling for a variable that actuallyrepresents a potentially intervening variablebetween the treatment and institutional trust.We think the problem of selection bias is likelyto be more serious in this instance, and for thatreason believe that our analytic strategy is themost appropriate, given the empirical andmeasurement constraints that we faced.

7. RESULTS

(a) Levels and structure of institutional trust

We begin by noting the absolute levels ofinstitutional trust in the Dominican Republic,regardless of whether individuals were exposedto civic education or not. Figure 1 shows theproportion of Dominicans who register ``muchtrust'' in each of the 10 political and civilinstitutions. As can be seen, only two institu-tions, the Church and the Educational System,register a majority of ``much trust'' responses,while the Mass Media and the Army hover


between the 35±40% mark. All other institu-tions register ``much trust'' responses of onlyapproximately 20%, indicating that only arelatively small minority of Dominicans have asigni®cant amount of trust in these institu-tionsÐincluding the judicial system, the politi-cal system, the parliament, local o�cials, andthe business community.

While it is di�cult to make exact compari-sons with other countries because of di�erencesin question wording and response categoriesacross di�erent surveys, it is neverthelessinstructive to compare the Dominican respon-ses to levels reported in other countries inrecent published work. Mishler and Rose(1997, p. 428), for example, report that nearlyone-third of East European respondents in1994 had either ``quite a lot'' or ``a great deal''of con®dence in the judicial system and in thepolice. According to public opinion surveysconducted in Latin America in 1996, an averageof 31% and 25% had either ``some trust'' or a``great deal of trust'' in the judiciary and police,respectively. (Countries included in the surveywere: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia,Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.The research was conducted by Latinobaro-metro.) By contrast, only 20% of Dominicanrespondents report ``much'' trust in their judi-ciary or their police. On other dimensions,notably Parliament and the Political System,the levels of trust in the East European, LatinAmerican and Dominican contexts are equally

low, and for some institutions (Church, Army,Media), they appear to be equally high.

It should also be noted that the levels ofabsolute distrust also appear to be relativelylow in the Dominican Republic, and perhapssomewhat lower than in Eastern Europeancountries. Only one institution, the BusinessCommunity, registers more than one-quarter``no trust'' responses, with most institutionsshowing between 5% and 20%. This contraststo Mishler and RoseÕs data, where an averageof one-third of respondents registered highlevels of distrust. As in Eastern Europe, theplurality response in the Dominican Republicappears to be one of ``little trust,'' or whatMisher and Rose call ``skepticism'' aboutinstitutions; about 50±60% of Dominicans fallin neither the extreme ``much trust'' or ``notrust'' categories. Thus, Dominican respon-dents are generally skeptical, with more trust-ing than distrusting responses about some civilinstitutions (Media, Church, Army, Educa-tional System), and equal amounts of trustingand distrusting responses on most purelygovernmental institutions.

We turn next to the basic di�erences in trustfor each of the 10 institutions between indi-viduals who were trained in any of the fourcivic education programs (N� 1017) and thecontrol sample (N� 1018). The results areshown in Figure 2, and indicate that civiceducation participants have signi®cantly lesstrust in each of the institutions than individuals

Figure 1. Trust in 10 Dominican institutions.


Figure 2. Institutional trust by civic education participation.


Figure 2. (continued)


in the control group. The ®gure shows thedi�erences in ``much trust'' and ``no trust''responses, with the ``little trust'' categoryremoved for ease of presentation. It can be seenthat for each of the 10 institutions, the di�er-ences are concentrated in the ``much trust''category; there are essentially no di�erencesbetween civic education and control groupindividuals in their likelihood of reporting ``notrust'' in the various institutions. Therefore anydi�erences seen in the ``much trust'' responsesare also seen (in the opposite direction) in the``little trust'' responses. This ®nding is ofinterest in itself, as it shows that civic educationdoes not increase the individualsÕ level ofabsolute distrust, but rather increases theirskepticism, a result which has di�erent impli-cations that we discuss below for the assess-ment of these programs in normative terms.

The results do suggest, however, that there isa modest, though uniform, tendency for indi-viduals who have received civic educationtraining to be less likely to report ``much trust''in the various institutions. The percentagedi�erences range from a high of 18.8 for theArmy to a low of 3.3 for the Church, with mostinstitutions showing di�erences of around 10±15 points (e.g., Judicial System, Local O�cials,Parliament, Police, Mass Media). All chi-squares are statistically signi®cant, withCramerÕs V, a suitable measure of association, 2

ranging from 0.21 for the Police, 0.20 for theArmy, 0.18 for the Judicial System, Parliamentand Local O�cials, to lows of 0.13 for theBusiness Community and 0.06 for the Church.Clearly civic education trainees have lesscon®dence in these political and civil institu-

tions than their counterparts in the controlgroup.

It is interesting to note the pattern of e�ectsof civic education on trust in the various insti-tutions. The most signi®cant e�ects of civiceducation were seen in the Police and theArmy, two institutions which until recentlywere signi®cant instruments of state repressionand generally represent the epitome of non-democratic institutions. Many observers notewith alarm continued levels of citizen trust andin some cases the apparent rise in popularsentiment toward the armed forces in manycountries in Latin America (Payne, 1998). Tothis extent, civic education may be instilling anecessary check on these possibly authoritariansympathies and developments. The nextgrouping of institutions a�ected by civic edu-cation are the purely governmental institu-tionsÐJudiciary, Parliament, Local O�cialsÐall of which register measures of association of0.l8. Finally, the institutions where civic edu-cation had the least e�ect were on nonstate, orcivil institutions such as the Mass Media, theChurch, and the Business Community. These®ndings suggest that civic education e�orts areconcentrated on state-oriented institutions,with more critical e�ects being seen in preciselythose institutions that have historically beenleast democratic. Again, such ®ndings haveinteresting normative implications that shall bediscussed below.

This distinction between the e�ects of civiceducation on state-oriented and nonstate-ori-ented institutions leads to a further hypothesis:that civic education, by focusing on state actorsand their role in democratic politics, may



promote a distinction in peopleÕs mindsbetween their evaluations of these di�erentkinds of political and social institutions. Thatis, civic education may help individuals see thedi�erences between purely state actors andother kinds of social institutions. This is exactlywhat is shown in a factor analysis, the results ofwhich are presented in Table 2. Among indi-viduals who did not experience civic educationtraining, the 10 institutions load on a singledimension, with all factor loadings above 0.50except for the Church (0.47). Thus all of theseinstitutions re¯ect one underlying evaluativedimension for the average Dominican. Amongcivic education participants, however, twofactors emerge: one focusing mainly on stateinstitutions and the other on a more socialdimension, encompassing the Media, theChurch, the Educational System. The distinc-tions do not mirror perfectly the discussionabove, as the Army loads on both dimensionsand the Business Community on the ®rst factor.The latter result may be explained by thetraditional overlap between Dominican busi-ness groups and the government; a system thatcould be more appropriately called cronycapitalism than a private market economy.Nevertheless, there appears to be the tendencyof the civic education sample to make distinc-tions between state and society that eludeindividuals in the control group. Together withthe results discussed above, these ®ndingsindicate that civic education makes people

aware of state-society institutional di�erences,and also promotes greater skepticism aboutinstitutions that embody the state as opposedto the wider society.

(b) The e�ects of civic education on institutionaltrust: alternative explanations

Based on the factor analysis just reported, weconstructed a summary variable of trust in stateinstitutions by counting the number of thefollowing institutions in which the individualreports ``much trust:'' Judicial System, Police,Army, Parliament, Local O�cials, PoliticalSystem, and the Business Community. Each ofthe institutions exhibited factor loadings of 0.5or more (0.49 for the Army) on the ®rst factorabove. The reliability of the seven-item index isvery high, at 0.85. The mean for the index is1.33 with a standard deviation of 1.97.

In Table 3, we present three models thatexplore the e�ects of civic education on theseven-item institutional trust index. Model 1shows the simple e�ect of participation in eachof the four civic education programs. As can beseen, participation in each program is associ-ated with a lower level of overall institutionaltrust, with all e�ects being statistically signi®-cant. The largest of the e�ectsÐfor the PCelection monitoring programÐshows that civiceducation participants had ``much trust'' inalmost one fewer institution than the controlgroup (b�)0.92). Participants in two otherprogramsÐGAD and ADOPEMÐregisteredunstandardized slope coe�cients of )0.6 to)0.7, and the weakest e�ect was seen for therural-based program Radio Santa Maria(RSM), where participants nevertheless showed``much trust'' in 0.45 fewer institutions than thecontrol group.

The results in Model 2 suggest that some ofthe e�ects seen in the previous model were dueto selection e�ects, in that individuals who wereexposed to civic education training were alsolikely to possess certain demographic andpolitical characteristics that relate to institu-tional trust. Civic Education participants were,on average, younger, more highly educated,and more interested in local politics than thetypical Dominican respondent, and thesecharacteristics were all associated with lowerlevels of institutional trust. The e�ect of edu-cation on trust is particularly strong, andindeed its beta coe�cient of )0.21 is one of thelargest e�ectsÐin either directionÐreportedfor education in the literature (Hibbing &

Table 2. Factor loadings of institutional con®dence itemsfor civic education and non-civic education groups

Nonciviceducation

Civic education

Factor 1 Factor 1 Factor 2

Judiciary 0.69 0.52 0.41Media 0.59 0.27 0.60Church 0.47 )0.01 0.83Army 0.73 0.49 0.49Parliament 0.77 0.66 0.34Localo�cials

0.73 0.73 0.18

Police 0.76 0.64 0.39Politicalsystem

0.68 0.76 0.05

Educationalsystem

0.58 0.33 0.47

Businesscommunity

0.65 0.72 0.08

Varianceexplained

44.9 40.8 10.8


Theiss-Morse 1995; D�oring 1992; Hetherington1998). 3

Another demographic variable, residency inthe capital city of Santo Domingo, is alsonegatively related to trust, and this variableserves to increase the negative e�ect of partici-pation in the Radio Santa Maria program overits e�ect in Model 1. As the RSM program wasconducted mostly in rural areas, participantswere predisposed to be more trusting of insti-tutions, and controlling for these prior dispo-sitions means that the ``pure'' e�ect of theprogram is more negative on trust than seenbefore. Women are more likely to be distrustfulthan men, but as there are equal numbers ofmen and women in the participant and controlsamples, gender is irrelevant in accounting forthe e�ects of civic education on trust. Takentogether, the inclusion of the demographic andpolitical involvement variables diminishes the

civic education e�ects by approximately 50%for PC, GAD and ADOPEM, and increases thecivic education e�ects by approximately thesame amount for Radio Santa Maria. Equallyimportant, though, all of the civic educationcoe�cients remain statistically signi®cant,indicating that exposure to these programsdecreases institutional trust over and above thedispositions that civic education participantsmay hold prior to their training.

In Model 3, we enter the political attitudesthat, according to our hypotheses above, mayintervene between civic education and institu-tional trust. The most noteworthy ®nding fromthe model is how little including potentiallyintervening attitudes such as knowledge, socialtrust and e�cacy reduces the e�ects of civiceducation. Only for the GAD program did thepolitical variables wipe out the civic education±institutional trust relationship; for all other

Table 3. The e�ects of civic education on institutional trust: alternative models

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

B Beta B Beta B Beta

Civic education programsPC )0.92�� )0.17 )0.47�� )0.09 )0.40�� )0.08GAD )0.61�� )0.11 )0.32�� )0.06 )0.18 )0.03RSM )0.45�� )0.09 )0.63�� )0.12 )0.52�� )0.10ADOPEM )0.72�� )0.12 )0.40�� )0.06 )0.38�� )0.06

Demographics and prior pol. interestGroup memberships ± ± )0.01 )0.02 )0.01 )0.03Education ± ± )0.23�� )0.21 )0.13�� )0.12Age ± ± 0.01�� 0.06 0.01� 0.05Santo Domingo ± ± )0.29� )0.06 )0.07 )0.01Other urban ± ± )0.01 )0.02 0.01 0.01Gender ± ± )0.27�� )0.07 )0.37�� )0.09Time in community ± ± )0.03 )0.03 )0.01 )0.01Income ± ± )0.04 )0.04 )0.01 )0.01National political interest ± ± 0.01 0.04 0.11�� 0.07Local political interest ± ± )0.11� )0.05 )0.13�� )0.06Media exposure ± ± 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.04

Political knowledge and attitudesRights consciousness ± ± ± ± )0.02 )0.01Knowledge ± ± ± ± )0.19�� )0.12Rights knowledge ± ± ± ± )0.16�� )0.07Civic skills ± ± ± ± 0.37�� 0.07General e�cacy ± ± ± ± )0.24�� )0.09Local o�cials responsive? ± ± ± ± 0.39�� 0.18Social trust ± ± ± ± 0.19�� 0.14Necessity of elections ± ± ± ± )0.05 )0.03Support for liberty ± ± ± ± 0.04 0.02Low paternalism ± ± ± ± )0.01 )0.02Adjusted R-squared 0.05 0.10 0.18Number of cases (1754) (1754) (1754)

* P < 0.10 (two-tailed).** P < 0.05 (two-tailed).


programs the unstandardized coe�cients forthe programs in Model 3 were reduced by onlyapproximately 15%. Clearly, the dominante�ect in the model is a signi®cant negativedirect e�ect of civic education participation oninstitutional trust. 4

Nevertheless, many of the processes hypoth-esized earlier to explain the civic educatione�ects do in fact occur. We speculated that thenegative e�ect on trust would operate throughincreased awareness of system performance,through an increased sense of the unrespon-siveness of local political elites, and through aheightened perception of the gaps betweendemocratic ideals and current political prac-tices. Model 3 shows that each of these vari-ablesÐpolitical knowledge, perceivedunresponsiveness of local o�cials, knowledgeof democratic rights and ``rights conscious-ness''Ðis negatively related to institutionaltrust, with all but the latter e�ect achievingstatistical signi®cance. Dominican individualswho know more about politics in general, andwho know more about democracy and demo-cratic values in particular, are less likely to havetrust in governmental institutions. Further,civic education has weak positive e�ects oneach of these variables; that is, exposure to civiceducation increased peopleÕs storehouse ofpolitical knowledge, increased their knowledgeabout democratic rights (though this e�ect fallsjust short of statistical signi®cance), andincreased their sense that local o�cials are notresponsive to public demands. These e�ects aresummarized in path diagram form in Figure 3,with the e�ects aggregated across all civiceducation groups for ease of presentation. 5

Thus the causal mechanisms that werehypothesized to produce a negative relationshipbetween civic education and institutional trustwere almost all borne out in the Dominicanexperience. Civic education led to increasedlevels of general knowledge, democraticknowledge, and critical perspectives on localo�cials, each of which was associated withdecreased levels of trust.

On the other hand, almost none of the causalprocesses hypothesized to produce a positivecivic education/trust relationship appears tohave taken place. We expected such e�ects tooperate through the individualÕs rejection ofprevious anti-democratic regimes and througha positive spill-over e�ect from increased e�-cacy, interpersonal trust, and other supportivedemocratic values. We do not have a directmeasure of support for the previous authori-

tarian regime, but we did measure two variablesthat could be viewed as reasonable proxies forthe values inherent in that regime, the notionthat social order is more important than indi-vidual liberty, and support for a strong, pater-nalistic leader. Neither of these variables a�ectsinstitutional trust in Table 3, Model C one wayor the other. The model shows further thatpolitical e�cacy has a negative e�ect on insti-tutional trust, in contrast to the ®ndings ofprevious research in the United States andWestern Europe. So the positive e�ect of civiceducation on political e�cacy shown in Figure3 actually lowers overall levels of trust, incontrast to the expectations of the spill-overhypothesis. The only variable that appears toproduce a positive civic education-trust rela-tionship is social trust, which has a moderatelylarge positive e�ect on institutional trust and isa�ected in turn positively through participationin civic education programs. Thus civic educa-tion does appear to build attitudes of socialtrust, e�cacy, knowledge and the like, butalmost all of these variables have negativee�ects on trust in institutions. Moreover, theone causal process which produced a positivecivic education-trust relationship was decisivelyoutweighed by the many processes thatproduced a negative association. In short, civiceducation marginally increased the ``democra-ticness'' of the Dominican respondents, but themore ``democratic'' individuals became, the lesslikely they were to trust the institutions of theirpolitical system.

8. DISCUSSION

We have shown a negative relationshipbetween participation in four civic educationprograms and an individualÕs trust in govern-mental institutions in the Dominican Republic.Coupled with Bratton et al.Õs (1999) similar®nding in Zambia, it appears that democracytraining sponsored by USAID, while increasingindividual knowledge, e�cacy, and othersupportive democratic values, decreases thesense that governmental institutions are worthyof citizen trust. We attempted to explain this®nding through several intervening mechanismsand found some support for these causalprocesses: as individuals learn more about thepolitical system, they become more attuned tothe actual political and economic performanceof the government, which in the Dominicancase in the mid-1990s (and presumably the


Zambian case as well) was extremely poor. Inaddition, as individuals become more attachedto democratic rights and values, they tend tosee the existing political system as falling shortof these ideals. And as they come to believe thatentrenched local political elites are unrespon-sive to popular concerns, they deem govern-ment institutions as less trustworthy as well.

Nevertheless, the strongest e�ect in the studywas the direct negative in¯uence of civic edu-cation exposure on institutional trust. Thise�ect is somewhat of a puzzle. What explains it?That is, why is there still a direct e�ect once thetheoretically-relevant intervening variables

have been included in the models? Why shouldexposure to civic education per se lead todecreased institutional trust, over and above itsindirect e�ects through knowledge, responsive-ness, rights knowledge, and the like?

We do not have a de®nitive answer, but webelieve that at least part of the solution to thispuzzle lies in the group context in which civiceducationÐin the Dominican Republic andprobably elsewhereÐtakes place. Civic educa-tion does not take place in neutral socialsettings. It is undertaken not by hobby groups,sports clubs, or the other nonpolitical associa-tions idealized in the recent literature on ``social

Figure 3. Direct and indirect in¯uences of civic education on institutional trust. (Note: Demographic and prior politicalinvolvement variables from Table 2 included; coe�cients not known.)


capital,'' but rather by nongovernmentalpolitical organizations and civic groups whichare often antagonistic toward governments thatare perceived to be insu�ciently democratic,insu�ciently responsive to ordinary individu-als, and hostile to democratic reforms. In thissense, civic education may take place withinwhat Foley and Edwards (1996, pp. 38±39)label ``Civil Society II,'' a perspective whichemphasizes ``civil society as a sphere of actionthat is independent of the state that is capa-bleÐprecisely for this reasonÐof emergingresistance to a tyrannical regime.'' If this is thecase, then it would be expected that civic edu-cation would promote mistrust of currentpolitical institutions precisely because thegroups that conduct civic education see them-selves as a vital counterweight to potentiallynon-democratic state power.

A close examination of the recent relation-ship between NGOs and the Dominican state,as well as the speci®c civic education programsanalyzed in this paper, supports this conten-tion. As noted above, organized civil societygroups played a critical role in forcing theconcessions from President Balaguer that, inthe wake of widespread corruption and possibletheft of the 1994 presidential elections, led tothe Pact for Democracy and the 1996 elections.These experiences solidi®ed the long-standingoppositional posture of civic groups and othercivil society organizations vis-�a-vis the state. AsHartlyn writes: ``The crisis helped mobilizee�orts to strengthen civil society and furtherconvinced many groups of the futility ofworking with the state as long as it wascontrolled by Balaguer'' (Hartlyn, 1998, pp.211±212). The dominant stance of civil societyat the time of the civic education traininganalyzed here was undeniably antagonisticÐand justi®ably soÐtoward the Dominicangovernment.

This oppositional posture can also be seenclearly in the training materials used by thecivic education programs assessed in this study.Two basic themes run throughout the projectmaterials that the groups used. First, all of thematerials used as their basis a normativeconception of what democracy ought to be, andeither directly or indirectly attempted tocontrast that with the de®ciencies of the exist-ing regime. Second, all of the programs, inseeking to mobilize citizens to assume theirresponsibilities to participate politically,presented civil society and citizen initiative asthe path for a new democratic era in the

Dominican Republic. The overwhelmingmessage was that the sins of past governments,lack of accountability, unresponsiveness andcorruption, could only be overcome throughthe participation of civil society.

For example, according to the GAD groupÕsown description of its activities, the explicitconceptual goal was to create a new demo-cratic ``institutionality'' that inevitably wouldinvolve greater involvement of the civil societywith government. Much of this turned ongetting citizens involved through the work-shops with a diagnosis of the problems of thecountry and the development of proposals forthe institutional, economic and social devel-opment of the country. While the projectrecognized the importance of citizen con®-dence in the state, it posited that the channelsfor political participation must be reformedbefore citizen trust could increase. Projectmaterials and activities implored people toassume their responsibility of participating incivil society; government failure of the pastwas the fault of citizens for not becominginvolved. One of the project implementorsstated that the spirit of the project, by seekingto mobilize citizens to participate, meantchallenging the old order.

Radio Santa Maria had a long history as avoice of the opposition and the rural poor incentral Dominican Republic. In its materials,RSM typically de®ned a speci®c goal or taskthat a government should conduct, and thencontrasted it with the behavior of the currentgovernment. Thus, one training book teachesparticipants:

Those that govern have this task: to organize the re-sources of a community in a way that best respondsto their needs... [but in the Dominican Repub-lic]...many times it appears that those that govern onlylook for power because of the bene®ts that it will givethem, their families and their friends....Many timesthey become the worse problems (10 Pasos hacia laparticipaci�on pol�õtica, Manuel Maza M., S.J., textused by RSM, pp. 6±8).

Similarly, in a section on how to controlthose who govern, the books inveighs directlyagainst the government, citing in particular theoverwhelming power of the executive and theweakness of the competing branches ofgovernment that have created an unaccount-able state. In setting out the argument, thetextbook begins by asserting that a constitutionshould serve as the framework to limit andcontrol a government. The textbook then goes


on to argue that in the Dominican Republic theconstitution has failed to serve that purpose. Asa result, there has been no way to controlgovernment between elections:

Congressmen, senators, representatives depend on theexecutive power to get the funds necessary to serve thevoters in the provinces and districts....The judicialpower is not truly independent...externally our coun-try gives the impression that there exist three indepen-dent powers, but in reality the executive power doesnÕthave to account to anyone, neither the congress northe judicial branches have the power (10 Pasos haciala participaci�on pol�õtica, p. 26).

While less an explicitly opposition group, theAsociaci�on Dominicana para el Desarrollo de laMujer (ADOPEM) sought to mobilize womento assume a greater role in Dominican politicsand society and improve womenÕs rights in theDominican Republic. The ADOPEM materialshighlighted and asked participants to re¯ect onthe existing di�culties women face in theDominican Republic despite the existence ofinternational agreements concerning womenÕsrights and a list of rights inscribed in theDominican constitution. This gap, the projectmaterials stated, could only be closed if womenwould assume the responsibility of participat-ing and advocate change.

Finally, Participaci�on Ciudadana (PC) wasdevoted less to teaching and more towardorganizing citizens to observe and monitor the1996 elections. It was commonly understood,however, that PC was organized and ®lled withleaders and volunteers openly sympathetic tothe opposition Revolutionary DemocraticParty (PRD), which may have in fact won theelections in 1994 against President Balaguer,but then lost the 1996 elections to the Fernan-dez in a runo� election after the latter receivedthe support of the ex-President. The PC mate-rials did not devote as much attention to broadtheoretical references to the state and norma-tive conceptions of democracy, but the groupwas by its nature seeking to build societalchecks on the state. The training materialsfocused on the elections, and echoed the themespresent in the other programs. The materialsquizzed participants on their views of theintegrity of the Dominican electoral commis-sion (JCE), asking if they believed that it wasindependent and honest, the implicit assump-tion being that the JCE was not to be trusted.The materials attempt to demonstrate the fail-ures of the past elections and the need forcitizens to take matters in their own hands to

guarantee the freeness and fairness of elections.But here the electoral question also spills overto other matters of the state. By questioning themeans through which past government posi-tions had been ®lled, either directly, throughelections (the executive and the congress) orindirectly, through the appointment of electedo�cials, (the judiciary) the program broughtinto question the legitimacy of the DominicanRepublicÕs nominally democratic institutions.

Though we hesitate to make too much out ofthe relatively minor di�erences between theprograms, it is worth noting in Model 3/Table 3the di�erent e�ects on the participants of eachprogram. After controlling for demographicsand political knowledge and attitudes, thegreatest negative e�ect on trust was amongparticipants in the Radio Santa Mar�õaprograms and the weakest was among theparticipants in the GAD programs. We canonly speculate as to the causes but, arguably,the materials of the RSM programs were themost critical of the Dominican state, inveighingdirectly against speci®c institutionsÐthecongress, the judiciary, and the constitution.Moreover, the RSM courses often remained atan abstract level. The informal workshops andthe materials were used to teach communityleaders about the government, but there was nospeci®c attempt to bring government o�cialsinto the discussions. In contrast, the GADprogram, which registered the least negativee�ects, was aimed explicitly at developing aseries of civil society proposals to addressspeci®c, concrete problems of governance in theeducation system, the justice system, and inlocal government, for example. Unlike theRSM project, the GAD program was designedto include party and state representatives whowere presented these proposals and debatedthem with participants.

Our point is not to suggest that these groupssomehow distorted political reality in theirtraining programs, nor that they were notjusti®ed in presenting democratic trainingmaterials in a manner appropriate to currentsocietal conditions. Rather, we are speculatingthat the oppositional philosophy of the civilsociety groups that conducted civic educationmay go a long way toward explaining thenegative association seen here between expo-sure to civic education and institutional trust.This suggests a hypothesis to be explored infuture research: that the relationship betweencivic education and institution trust maydepend crucially on the overall relationship


between government and political associationswithin civil society. When these relationshipsare antagonistic, it may be expected thattraining conducted by these associations willlead to decreased institutional trust, even inindirect ways. In short, the e�ects of civiceducation on public trust in government will bea function of the nature of a countryÕs civilsociety, and the extent to which civil societygroups view their role as promoting politicalchange by serving as a necessary counterweightto the state.

9. CONCLUSION: NORMATIVE ANDPRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The results presented here raise the inevita-ble question of whether negative institutionaltrust is a desirable outcome of civic education.Is it good for a democratizing political systemfor its citizens to lose con®dence in coreinstitutions as a result of participating indemocracy training programs? From theperspective of international donors such asUSAID, should this e�ect be an indication ofa programÕs ``success,'' or should fundingagencies attempt to in¯uence the implementa-tion of civic education programs to producemore positive views of a countryÕs politicalinstitutions?

We view the results in the DominicanRepublic as unequivocally positive for demo-cratic development, although we can imagineother political circumstances where these e�ectscould be viewed as less constructive. First, wenote that civic education served to delineateevaluations of government from non-govern-mental societal institutions. In and of itself, thisis an important step in democratic develop-ment. As the ``government'' becomes moreclearly focused in the publicÕs mind, the possi-bilities of e�ective communication betweencitizens and elites increases, as do the possibil-ities of elite responsiveness to public demands.Second, the strongest negative e�ects from civiceducation were seen for the Armed Forces andthe Police, the least democratic state institu-tions and historically the instruments of staterepression and authoritarian rule. To thisextent, civic education may be encouragingcitizens to judge state institutions according tomore democratic standards.

Third, we note that the negative e�ects ofcivic education on institutional trust wereaccompanied by positive e�ects on virtually all

other orientations related to democracy. Civiceducation did not make Dominicans generallymore negative about democratic norms andvalues, but rather more negative only aboutgovernmental institutions. Individuals exposedto civic education became more e�cacious,more knowledgeable about politics, moreknowledgeable about democratic liberties, andmore trusting of fellow citizens, all character-istics that comprise the prototypical demo-cratic citizen. If these newly ``democratic''individuals come to view their governinginstitutions less favorably, that seems more are¯ection on the institutions themselves thanon de®ciencies of the individuals or thetraining they received. Moreover, the e�ectsfrom civic education appeared to move indi-viduals towards increased skepticism, notoutright distrust of any of the institutionsexamined.

More generally, it is undoubtedly true that,as the civic education groups themselvesargued, rolling back decades of an insulated,overbearing state requires a more mobilizedcivil society. In the Dominican Republic(indeed much of Latin America) citizenparticipation and civil society hold the key tobuilding more transparent, responsivegovernments. Politicians and institutions areunlikely to reform themselves; the engine ofreform will most likely come from an activesociety. To accomplish this citizens must beginwith a conception of how the regime can beimproved and then mobilized to those ends. Itdemands skeptical citizens, citizens who areboth aware of the need for change and feelempowered to a�ect it. Inevitably this involvesa certain sense of citizens versus the state, ofcivil society as the protector of citizens againstthe state.

At the same time, it is true that too muchskepticism can also be dangerous for a politicalsystem, and can result from unrealistic expec-tations regarding the capacity and speed withwhich state institutions can reform. On theopposite side, too much skepticism can breedapathyÐa prevailing sense that institutionssimply cannot be changed and there is littlevalue in participating to reform them. In theDominican Republic, as in many other coun-tries after democratic transitions, state institu-tions have little experience and are poorlyequipped to deal democratically and e�ectivelywith the demands of its citizens. Declininglevels of trust can certainly exacerbate thesedi�culties. The question then becomes, to what


extent does lack of con®dence of state institu-tions serve the goal of promoting positivepolitical change and at what point does ithamper democratic governance and ultimatelyundermine popular support for democracyitself?

We do not think that this point has beenreached in the Dominican case. But we dobelieve it is a valid concern, and one that civiceducators and funding agencies ought to beaware of. Our analysis suggests three generalrecommendations for donors and implementorsof civic education.

First, civic education programs should becareful not simply to present an idealizedversion of democratic institutions. Fewgovernments could stand up fully to theportraits of democratic institutions presented insome of the materials used in the DominicanRepublic. To be sure, failures and shortcom-ings of existing regimes need to be demon-strated, but there is also a risk of setting thestandards too high, of creating unrealisticexpectations about what democracy and a statealready handicapped by corruption and ine�-ciency can and should deliver. The issue inthese cases is how programs can couple genuineand warranted frustration with a realisticsupport for democracy.

One way to do this is to attempt to recog-nize the limits of social mobilization inachieving what is ultimately a long-termphenomenon: institutional change. As Putnam(1993, p. 60) argues, ``Those who build newinstitutions and those who would evaluatethem need patience.'' The e�ort to mobilizecitizens against an unaccountable state maybreed citizen resentment, but it is necessary todraw a distinction between short-term changeand long-term change. To this end programs,in addition to focusing on larger issues ofdemocratic failings, need to focus on speci®cshort-term results.

Second, civic education should attempt todraw clear distinctions between institutions ofthe regime in their materials and pedagogy soas not to tar all of the state in one broad brushstroke. The programs studied in the DominicanRepublic produced laudable results in helpingcitizens distinguish between di�erent stateinstitutions, in particular producing greaterdegrees of skepticism toward the armed forcesand the police. Similarly, regarding democraticinstitutions, civic education can also serve toprovide participants with a ®ner grainedunderstanding of the functions and operation

of democratic institutions. These can assist notonly in the evaluation of those institutions butalso in focusing on speci®c areas in which theyshould be reformed within democratic institu-tions.

Third, along these same lines, greaterattention needs to be paid to how civic edu-cation can be used to promote greater collab-oration between civil society and the state.Exclusively oppositional civic education has itslimits and over the long term may be coun-terproductive. Civic education needs toexplore ways to build bridges with the state,when there is political will, to reform speci®cfunctions. There exist a growing number ofgroups that combine civic education with stateactivities, helping local governments establishjustices of the peace to ensure that localdisputes can be mediated, creating legal assis-tance services, working with local governmentsin community projects and improving admin-istration, and sharing information and assist-ing legislators carry out their duties. Theseactivities promise results, both in the comple-tion of state functions and in the services theyprovide to citizens. Moreover, by motivatingcitizens to cooperate toward speci®c ends, suchactivities also help to promote bonds ofintersocial trust, a desirable goal in itself butone that also, as our results demonstrate,increases trust in institutions.

Of course, these measures can work onlywhere there is political will in the state andamong public functionaries, and achieving thatmay require the sort of oppositional civiceducation that may link to political reformagendas and force politicians to listen. Thispoints to what may be a necessary distinctionin civic education programming betweenprograms that seek to mobilize popular opin-ion and participation against undemocratic orcorrupt institutions and leaders, and thoseprograms that seek to collaborate in thatreform once the transition occurs or once theyhave gained the ear of political leaders. Oncethis political opening occurs, donors and civilsociety groups should consistently exploreways in which they can assist in this process tobring genuine results. Even in these cases thetask is a di�cult one. The process of institu-tional reform will never be a smooth, and it isone that, as we have shown, is likely in theshort term to produce greater frustration thanresults. Only pursuing a strictly oppositionalroute, however, may also bring longer-termrisks.


NOTES

1. As this is publicly funded research, interested

readers may obtain the data through USAID's Center

for Democracy and Governance.

2. For a two by three crosstabulation table, CramerÕsV is calculated as the square root of chi-square (v2)

divided by the number of cases. Thus CramerÕs V for

the trust in the Judicial System item is 0.18, or the

square root of 64.6 divided by 1993, the number of

valid cases for that item. CramerÕs V is a suitable

measure of association because it corrects for the

tendency of chi-square to be arti®cially in¯ated with

large sample sizes (see Healey, 1999, pp. 334±337). The

measure runs from 0 to 1, with higher numbers

indicating a stronger association between civic educa-

tion treatment and (negative) trust.

3. The ``beta coe�cient'' here refers to the standard-

ized regression coe�cient; that is, the unstandardized

coe�cient multiplied by the standard deviation of X

divided by the standard deviation of Y. This provides

a scale-free measure that indicates how much of a

standard deviation change in the dependent variable

(trust) is produced by a standard deviation change in

the independent variable (see Healey, 1999, pp. 451±

453).

4. We note that the adjusted R-squared of the ®nal

model, 0.18, indicates that there is much unexplained

variance in the institutional trust measure. But, the 0.18

value is nearly identical to the .19 value that Mishler and

Rose (1997) found with many of these same variables

(Blocks A, B, C and D in their Table 4). It is also the

case R-squared values in the 0.15±0.35 range are

commonplace in many survey-based studies of demo-

cratic values in emerging as well as established democ-

racies (e.g., Gibson et al., 1992; Evans and White®eld,

1995).

5. The coe�cients in Figure 3 represent path coe�-

cients, or standardized regression coe�cients from

models predicting each of the intervening variables

(knowledge, rights knowledge, civic skills, political

e�cacy, local o�cial responsiveness, social trust) with

civic education and the control variables from the model

report in Table 3. For example, the 0.08 coe�cient from

civic education to political knowledge is the standard-

ized e�ect of civic education on political knowledge,

controlling for the other variables in Table 3. The )0.13

coe�cient from civic education to institutional trust is

the standardized e�ect of civic education on trust,

controlling for the e�ects of the other variables in the

®gure, as well as the control variables from the model

report in Table 3.

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APPENDIX A

Political knowledge The questionnaire contains four questions about knowledge of incumbents and theelectoral process. We created a knowledge scale simply by adding the correctanswers for each set of questions.

Rights knowledge The questionnaire contains four questions about whether the DominicanConstitution guarantees the right to criticize the government (yes), the right toform groups and associations (yes); the right to practice any religion (yes); and theright to elect provincial governors (no)

Civic skills The questionnaire contains six questions asking the respondent to compare him orherself to others he or she knows in doing things such as solving problems, andcommunicating ideas. We scored an answer of ``better than'' as two; an answer of``same as'' as one; and ``worse than others'' as zero. We then added up these scoresand divided by six to create a scale from 0 to 2. The reliability of the scale, asmeasured by its CronbachÕs alpha score, was 0.77

General e�cacy The questionnaire asks three questions on e�cacy, all asking the respondent toagree or disagree on a four-point scale to a series of questions concerning theirviews of their in¯uence on the political system. The more e�cacious answers werecounted as one and the scores for all three questions were added to create a scalefrom 1 to 4. The reliability of the scale is 0.68

Local o�cialresponsiveness

The questionnaire asked whether the respondent strongly agreed to stronglydisagree with the following statement: `Ìf I had some complaint about a localgovernment activity and told it to a local o�cial, he or she would pay a lot ofattention to what I had to say''

Support for democraticliberty

We asked a single question concerning the respondent's support for the value ofliberty versus social order on a four-point agree/disagree scale: `Ìt is better to livein an orderly society than to allow people so much freedom that they can bedisruptive''

Paternalism Two questions with four point agree-disagree scale: `À good president should belike a fatherÐsomeone to whom you should look to solve your problems,'' and`À president needs to maintain order and stability, even if it means ignoring orbreaking some laws''

Social trust Respondents were asked if they would depend on any of the following in times ofcrisis: family, neighbors, friends, local associations, local government o�cials,priests. We created a scale of social trust by adding up the number of times therespondent said yes. The scale goes from 0 to 6, with the scale reliability being 0.71


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