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Class inequality, power, and trust in private companies: evidence from Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2024

Pablo Pérez-Ahumada
Affiliation:
Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
Francisca Gutiérrez-Crocco*
Affiliation:
Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile
Charo Astorga-Pinto
Affiliation:
Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile
*
Corresponding author: Francisca Gutiérrez-Crocco; Email: [email protected]

Abstract

In the last few years, legitimacy has proven to be a fundamental power resource for the business class. Building on the idea of “discursive power,” investigations have demonstrated that when the business class successfully shapes public discourses and public opinion, its power increases. With this article, we contribute to this research by showing that businesses’ success in building discursive power, as expressed in individual trust in private companies, is limited by individual- and macro-level factors associated with class inequality, class politics, and power. Using data from 15 Latin American countries (2005–2015), we show that in the period studied, the propensity to trust private companies was significantly lower among those in underprivileged class positions (e.g., working-class people or the informal self-employed) and among those who identify with the political left and have less confidence in political institutions. At the macro level, trust in companies was lower in countries ruled by the left or in countries where inequality rose or where citizens’ trust in political institutions improved. At the end of this article, we identify three patterns of business legitimacy in Latin America and show how our results contribute to the recent research on trust, class, and power.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Vinod K. Aggarwal

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