Cultura política en Lima, ¿qué hacer? Interés y consumo de información política

The democratic ideal is that the act of voting is the end point of a process where people are informed of the different proposals, of the candidates and their teams. People are expected to have discussed these issues before in different spaces of their daily lives. That they listen and express opinions in various media (radio, press, television, Internet, social media, etc.). That they attend demonstrations or rallies. Approaches such as Deliberative Democracy (Habermas, 2005; García, 2015) place an important emphasis on the need for the citizen to be informed and participate in the debate of political proposals to give substance to democracy. Voting is one of those moments. And here the problems begin. An important component of political culture is the type and level of interest that people have in various aspects of what happens in public life. Focusing on Lima, in a study carried out in 2015 through eight group dynamics and 1503 surveys in all socioeconomic levels (Chaparro, 2018), what we have is a low level of political interest, associated with low levels of perception of efficacy politics that are linked to a series of populist attitudes. It is observed that a low level of external political efficacy (perception of not being listened to by politicians) has important consequences linked to political disaffection and a positive assessment of populist behavior. Some segments of voters more interested than others in politics are identified, as well as groups that have the potential to be motivated if some changes are made in the political system.