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Abstract
Does coming of age under democracy durably shape political attitudes? We test the formative-window hypothesis using birth-cohort variation in democratic exposure across first-transition countries in the World Values Survey and Latinobarómetro, identifying effects from cross-country differences in transition timing. On regime support we find no evidence that formative exposure raises support, an informative null whose equivalence bounds rule out effects of substantively meaningful size within this design. On emancipative values, the Inglehart-Welzel tradition’s signature formative outcome, an apparent cohort gradient is not identified as formative: it appears among never-exposed cohorts, shows no discontinuity at transition, and persists where exposure is fixed at its maximum and formation cannot operate. It is observationally equivalent to a secular cohort trend correlated with transition timing. A country-specific cohort-trend control absorbs most of the gradient while leaving the regime null intact.
Keywords
Democratization, Formative Window, Political Attitudes, Emancipative Values, Regime Support, Cohort Analysis
Citation
Chávez Padilla, Carlos César. 2026. “Shifts in Regime, Shifts in Mind: Estimating the Attitudinal Effects of Democratization.” Working paper.