A recent article published in April 2019 argued that the increasingly widespread belief that Latin American and Caribbean countries were governed to benefit “the few” rather than “the many” suggested that the legitimacy of institutions may be declining. Using data from the latest Latinobarómetro, the article put forward the idea that because people believed that rules were unfair, they will be more likely to not comply with them. According to the article no legitimacy on norms, meant no compliance. While some data may show correlation and support this conclusion, legitimacy is intertwined with the dynamics of accountability and democratic governance. As such, legitimacy is not unidimensional. On the contrary, the interplay of legitimacy, accountability, and governance is a multidimensional enterprise, that continues to evolve not only in Latin America and the Caribbean, but across the globe. Legitimacy is but one ingredient of outcomes, procedures, and relations in a democratic socio-political space. How can we analyze and measure legitimacy at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century?
4democraticgovernance 