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The evolution of the European Union (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) raises questions about whether societies in member states share a common or convergent defence culture. Conceptual and methodological problems in the existing literature, however, make it difficult to measure this phenomenon. That is why this paper proposes a new model to measure the political culture relative to European defence, using a mixed factor analysis. In addition, drawing on a series of Eurobarometer surveys, it charts current attitudes towards defence in European citizenship and the impact of the war in Ukraine. The findings point to the existence of several political subcultures regarding defence in the EU. They also indicate various methodological strengths – and limitations – arising from the available Eurobarometer data.

This paper begins with an overview of some of the difficulties with modern conceptions – as formulated especially by Ugo Coli, Frederik Vervaet, and Carsten Lange – of the Triumvirate rei publicae constituendae as an instance of the so-called magistracies ad tempus incertum. According to these scholars, the Triumvirate could be legally retained past the term stipulated by statutory provisions. Drawing upon the notion that the contemporaries perceived the Triumvirate as a temporary formalization of personalized informal power, which would persist and effectively control both the sphere militiae and the sphere domi even after its holders ceased to be triumvirs and formally became promagistrates, this paper puts forth a hypothesis to elucidate the use of the term ἀντάρχοντες (typically denoting promagistrates) in an Aphrodisias inscription from ca. 39/38 BCE. In this text, ἀντάρχοντες refers to those who could convene the Roman Senate. The understanding of the Triumvirate holds pivotal significance as a prerequisite for any interpretation of this inscription, but the latter tells us more about the Realpolitik of the late republican promagistracy than the formalities of the Triumvirate. In unraveling the reasons for which the inscription attributes to the ἀντάρχοντες the authority that promagistrates never formally possessed, we must account for the possibility that the text collapses one’s legal rights and statuses from distinct temporal contexts and one’s capacity to take informal political initiative, into a single construction. However, this reading becomes plausible only when we take into consideration the previous experience of the Romans and provincials with some powerful promagistrates interfering with Roman city politics.

This study, of a theoretical-documentary nature, deals with the implications of political culture for the construction process of Brazilian democracy and for social participation in the management of public policies, especially education. Methodologically supported in the critical dialectical perspective the text seeks to demonstrate the advances and setbacks of the process of building democracy, as well as the impasses to social participation resulting from the authoritarian, clientelist and elitist political culture that historically crosses the Brazilian State and the different social institutions. The study highlights the advances achieved with the 1988 Constitution, as well as the setbacks operated as a result of the neoliberal logic deepened in the government of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro in order to weaken social participation and democratic control in the scope of public policies, such as education. However, it also shows that despite the setbacks that have occurred in this scope, the social participation remains alive and the fight for the strengthening and expansion of participatory democracy has been happening in opposition to the logic of the destruction of the Brazilian participatory heritage built over the last 30 years.

As early as 1820, the liberals developed a martyrdom pantheon that provided their movement with heroic referents capable of embodying the values they defended, but also of stimulating the political commitment of their compatriots. Particularly innovative, the lithograph « Víctimas de la causa popular », designed by Victoriano Ametller and Louis Charles Legrand, dated 1853, implements a graphic and textual discourse that is both complex and highly effective, which aims to bring together beyond of the Republican-Democratic camp. Its impact is confirmed by the reaction it provoked from Isabella II, who tried to censor it.

In the summer of 1835, a banner arrived at the «camp and court» of Don Carlos, a banner with an image of Our Lady of Sorrows. Immediately, the Virgin Mary, under this title, was proclaimed «generalísima» of the «royal army» of Don Carlos. In the history of this banner, there are many elements of the political culture of early Carlists. This article examines this history by underlying the political and cultural contexts in which it developed.

The purpose was to elucidate how the interpretation of the past takes action in the notion of citizenship of high school students from Querétaro in relation to the Mexican Republic. A selective quantitative methodology (data from the Americas Barometer Project and Resident Project data) was implemented to interpret them qualitatively. It is exposed a) problematization of the construct of citizenship in relation to historical consciousness and culture; b) comparison of data from the Resident Project for Querétaro (Latapí and Rivas, 2021, 2022), applied to young people aged 16 to 18 in 2019, with national data on 18-year-olds from the Barometer of the Americas, 2021; c) results provide agreement on the concept of depoliticized and static citizenship associated with legalistic rules, not built on participation but on the observance of moral norms. This is associated with the prevailing historical culture and historical consciousness.

The article analyzes the experience of two decades of work by the MST National Theater Brigade in peasant communities in several Brazilian states, through the methodologies of participant observation, literature review and qualitative research. The work highlights the traditions of popular and political theater that give rise to the theatrical experience of the MST. One of the results of the research is to highlight that the peculiar dynamics of production and circulation of the Brigade had consequences in public universities, in the Degrees in Rural Education, demonstrating the potential for building a counter-hegemonic political culture.

The concept of cognitive regionness is a theoretical tool that was put forward by the Visegrád project of Political Regionalization of Visegrád Countries (2015-2018). The main objective of the project was to verify the nature and perspectives for cooperation of the V4 countries – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland – during a period when the system of international relations was undergoing profound changes. Initially, this research endeavor sought to determine whether the integration efforts of small and medium-sized states make sense in the contemporary framework of international relations. The theory of comparative regionalism provided a series of answers in this regard. Another line of inquiry attempted to ascertain whether V4 states enjoy a deep cohesiveness. If so, a follow-up question sought to understand the roots of this “deep cohesiveness”. Was it based on long-term cooperation, or was it, rather a product of a temporary “utilitarian” cooperation, entirely dependent on the will of the politicians? Answers to this question are provided in the second and, especially, in the third section. The concept of cognitive regionness helped answer the aforementioned inquiries. The theory of comparative regionalism provides the methodological basis for our study. This theory was developed in the last three decades by the Institute of Global Studies at the University of Göteborg in Sweden. The concept of “cognitive regionness” represents an original contribution that compliments the concept of regionness introduced by this theory.

The spectacle was prominent in public displays and mass meetings in midtwentieth-century Russia and Germany as a quest for unity in political culture. In Russia, it was countered by Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s novelistic dialogue, polyphony, heteroglossia, and carnival. In Germany, it appeared in its most grotesque form in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which proclaims Hitler’s quest for German national unity and celebrates his National Socialist mass meetings, which created the appearance of a false unity imposed by force of arms. In the United States, Hitler’s spectacle was critiqued in Kenneth Burke’s review of Mein Kampf and continually challenged throughout his life’s work. Burke’s review critiques Hitler’s strategy of attempting to unite Germany by dividing it from those who opposed him, in particular non-German ethnic groups. Burke was engaged in sociopolitical issues throughout his lifetime, and his work offers theories and principles aimed at diversity in unity in political culture and offered as a counterforce to Hitler’s spectacle of a false unity—a counter-spectacle in the form of identification, dramatism, dialectical and aesthetic transcendence, and a satiric mock portrait of a false unity.

The first erosion of democracy in Latin America did not occur in the twentieth-century, but, rather, the nineteenth. I will argue that in Mexico and Colombia a vibrant, democratic political culture had emerged by the 1850s; however, by the 1870s, a political movement that united Liberals and Conservatives began to suspect that the democratic politics they had once regarded as making them modern was instead hindering their societies’ progress. Democracy was not promoting, but, rather, hindering economic progress. This essay will explore the historic relation between capitalism (as Latin America entered into a period of export-oriented capitalist growth) and democracy (in a nineteenth century in which most of the world’s republics were in Latin America).

This article analyses the role of the socialist political culture in the social construction of Spanish national identity. The Balearic Islands and the Second Republic are the geographical and chronological frames, while the socialist’ press is the main source of information. The study focuses on the sociability acts gathered and valued in that press. The hypothesis sustained is that the socialism was an active agent in the socialization of the idea of Spain through the different ritual, recreational and political acts and practices that it carried out.

The Liga Operária was the first organization in Pernambuco to run elections with a programmatic agenda focused on the workers concerns, its candidates were representatives of the working class. This happened in the first republican year. The Liga's trajectory encompasses a moment of transition in the political actions of organized urban workers. The new regime, the abolition of slavery, and the spread of socialist ideals have biased a considerable renewal of symbols (the pride in wearing the proletarian blue collar) and strategies for political action (the dispute at the polls) of that group. In order to dimension the limits and possibilities of this scenario, this article seeks to put in perspective the past performance of the members of the Liga through the associative universe of the capital of Pernambuco - through mutualists, catholic brotherhoods and abolitionist societies. And, also, to analyze the electoral trajectory of the group.

This special issue focuses on a few particular constituent moments that marked the political and institutional history of Portugal and Brazil, between 1926 and 1988. The selected articles explore the arguments and negotiations involved in the creation of constitutional contents during the historical experiences of authoritarianism and transition to democracy. Their main novelty lies in the approach of the constitutional projects that were publicly presented but were not approved or were partially rejected. For scholars who are interested in the political culture of authoritarianism and transitions to democracy, this dossier generates new knowledge on a topic scarcely explored in the literature and opens up new research perspectives. This text offers an introduction to the special theme section on Failed Constitutional Projects in Portugal and Brazil, 20th Century, guest-edited by Paula Borges Santos and Ivo Veiga.

Abstract This essay explores the role that ideas about urban citizenship played in the political and economic development of English colonies across the Americas. Scholars have traditionally portrayed English America as rural in comparison to Spanish and Portuguese Americas. While it is true that English colonial towns did have smaller populations than Iberian cities, ideas about urban political identity were not absent in English colonies. In fact, urban citizens, and their political culture, were at the forefront of English colonization in the early-seventeenth century. In contrast to Iberian America, though, English colonists established fewer new urban communities and instead continued to hold on to their identity rooted in particular English towns and cities. As such, English America became a web of overlapping urban citizen networks still tied to English corporate communities. As a result, when the English monarchs sought to centralize the imperial state in the early seventeenth century, colonists resisted this political and economic encroachment by adopting the structures and rhetoric of urban republicanism. The importance of these urban republican traditions helps to explain the specific form of republicanism that became popular in English America in the decades before the American Revolution. This rich tradition of urban republicanism was largely disconnected from specific urban communities in the New World, and this allowed the ideology to be flexible enough to resist the rationalizing reforms of the late eighteenth century and give rise to a more overtly exclusionary definition of citizenship in the new United States.

This paper analyzes the role of the duke of Medinaceli in face of the Spanish succession crisis. By rejecting historiographical attempts to include the duke within one or other dynastic party, the essay emphasizes instead his total loyalty to the united Spanish Monarchy. By doing so, the defense of the unity of the Monarchy attempted by Medinaceli is understood not only in a territorial viewpoint but as a safeguard of a distinctive political model: the so-called ‘aristomanzia’. Thanks to it, Spanish nobility had been traditionally able to control the King by way of the Council of State and the consensus of the Grandees, a practice threatened at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century and defended, but without success, by Medinaceli. This paper analyzes the role of the Duke of Medinaceli in the face of the Spanish succession crisis. By rejecting historiographical attempts to include the duke within a dynastic party, the essay emphasizes the idea of his loyalty to the Spanish Monarchy. In this way the defense of the unity of the Monarchy undertaken by Medinaceli is understood not only in a territorial viewpoint but as a pragmatic safeguard of a political model: the so-called ‘aristomanzia’. Thanks to it, the Spanish nobility had been traditionally able to control the King by way of the Council of State and the consensus of the Grandees, a practice that languished at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century and defended with no success by Medinaceli.

En este artículo se analiza la cultura política de estudiantes de universidades interculturales ubicadas en tres regiones de México: centro, sureste y golfo. La cultura política se entiende como las predisposiciones subjetivas de un individuo ante el sistema político, sus instituciones, actores y procesos. Una de sus características es que se construye a partir del contexto social y político en el que están inmersas las personas. El cuestionario, aplicado a 228 estudiantes de las tres instituciones, abarca la información política que tienen, la percepción y el nivel de confianza en las figuras de autoridad y sus actitudes ante los partidos políticos, el voto y las elecciones. Destaca la poca confianza de los alumnos en las figuras de gobierno, el distanciamiento hacia los partidos políticos y su escasa información política; rasgos de una cultura política alejada del ideal democrático.

Resumen: La progresiva pérdida de prestigio y autoridad del Tribunal Constitucional es consecuencia, entre otros motivos, de un proceso de nombramiento y selección de sus magistrados ciertamente discutibles. Si bien los principales remedios a dicha situación deban venir más de la cultura política que de la ingeniería jurídica, también es cierto que determinadas carencias reclaman simplemente el efectivo cumplimiento de los mandatos legales. Así sucede con el mandato de equilibrio de sexos que la LO 3/2007 dispone para los poderes públicos y que el TC no ha teniendo en cuenta en ninguna de sus renovaciones. Un mandato que deriva a su vez de la necesidad de interpretar nuestro sistema constitucional en términos de democracia paritaria. Abstract: The progressive loss of prestige and authority of the Constitutional Court is a consequence, among other reasons, of a certainly debatable process of appointment and selection of its judges. Although the main remedies to this situation must come more from the political culture than from legal engineering, it is also true that certain deficiencies simply demand the effective compliance with legal mandates. This is the case with the mandate of «gender balance» that the LO 3/2007 provides for the public authorities and that the Constitutional Court has not taken into account in any of its renewals. A mandate that derives from the need to interpret our constitutional system in terms of parity democracy. Summary: 1. Introduction: Legal Engineering vs. Political Culture. 2. The appointment of men and women judges. 3. The composition of the Constitutional Court from the point of view of Gender. 4. Conclusions and Proposals.

These paper aims discuss the relationship between historical knowledge and the political positioning of young people from the high school, between 15 and 18 years old. For do this, a quantitative data collection method was used to give a general picture ofthis relationship. The questionnaireswere applied in Ponta Grossa -PR and Castro -PR, both of them in the Campos Gerais region, between May and Juneof 2017. The chosen topic to reflect about the political positioning and historical knowledge was the period about 1964-1985 in Brazil, while the country was governed by the military. The data collected allows us to perceive that the young people who present a bigger historical knowledge about the period adhere to more complex solutions.

In the 18th century there was a series of economic, sociocultural and propaganda factors that transformed the print into a useful tool for the power. This lead to creating a specific printing house belonging to the monarchy in a similar fashion to other European countries. Although the Imprenta Real —the Spanish Royal Print— was devoted to produce official texts at the beginning, the number of publications increased till other printers considered there was an intromission in their business because of the abuse of power. The aim of this article is to describe the bibliographic collections produced by the Imprenta Real Print through the preserved catalogues.

While the conflicts between Queen Melisende of Jerusalem and the men in her family have received considerable scholarly attention, explanations for the ease with which they reconciled remain elusive. As this article argues, contrary to theories advanced in the past, Melisende’s role in government was not the product of a consensus among nobles to temporarily suspend the norms of political participation that invested all authority in a single, male, ruler. The position she occupied was not “exceptional,” a disruption in the fabric of patriarchal dynastic succession that cloaked the Latin East. Rather, she occupied a legitimate position as co-ruler of the Kingdom, filling the role envisioned for her by her father, Baldwin II, who recognized in corporate monarchy an ideal political configuration for the challenges presented by governing in the Latin East. Past failures to provide an accurate and complete understanding of Melisende’s role in the governance of Jerusalem has circumscribed our understanding of the nature of monarchy and rulership in this crusader kingdom, which remains inaccurate and incomplete as a result. In their attempt to impose a uniform, static template of feudal governance on the crusader kingdoms of Latin East, scholars have under appreciated the extent to which medieval monarchy was both fluid and contingent. As the discussion here demonstrates, modes of governing were constantly adjusted to the demands of a particular time and place, responding to the unique political culture of a particular region. This was especially true for monarchy in the nascent crusader kingdom of twelfth-century Jerusalem, which witnessed the evolution of a political system formed in the crucible of war.

This article is a reflection on the role played by Pernambuco Masons, upon the 1930 Revolution discussing their strategies, institutions, while detailing how they forwarded the movement by the foundation of lodges and libraries thus fostering public debate. and strenghtening their positions in the political and intellectual scene in Pernambuco, Brazil, in the 1930’s and 40’s and its connections with the rest of Brazil and the world.

The article analyzesthe variables that modernization theory and rational choice theory have revealed as essential for the occurrence of democratization. While understanding the importance of these approaches, he directs the scope of his analysis to another equally important determinant, political culture. The change of social values ends up transforming culture, constituting itself as an indispensable instrument not only for the possibility of democratization, but also for the consolidation of the regime and the quality of democracy.

Despite authoritarianism, the Brazilian military dictatorship has produced a speech in defense of democracy, according to the Doctrine of National Security (DSN). To legitimate it, the television-scheduling grid assumes a pedagogical role in the constitution of meanings desired by the regimen, mainly those of national integration and modernity. This text sees the television field as an integral part of the group who took up the political power of the country in 1964. However, just like the other forms of solidarity, the one stablished among the TV broadcasters’ owners (a public concession) and the Brazilian military dictatorship is not exempt of disruption. Therefore, the text points to the need to relativize existing readings, which build up a simplistic alliance between this field and the military dictatorship.

The aim of this work is that of contributing to foster the knowledge of the Latin American political culture and its low Republican intensity. In Latin American countries, the formally Republican political regimes coexist with socially institutionalised patronage systems and corrupt practices. Such coexistence produces a symbolic dislocation that endangers legitimacy. Reasonable constructions become indispensable in order to generate -at the imaginary level democratic fictions to serve the exercise of these ways of dominance. One way of doing this is by having recourse to -Republican cynicism-, otherwise, discursive practices that deconstruct or simulate the Republican principles of the symbolic order so as to legitimise particularistic forms of political behaviour. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- El objetivo de este artículo es aportar al conocimiento de la cultura política latinoamericana, caracterizada por su baja intensidad republicana. En estos países sus regímenes políticos formalmente republicanos coexisten con prácticas clientelares y corruptas que están socialmente institucionalizadas. Esta convivencia genera una dislocación a nivel simbólico que pone en peligro el principio de legitimidad. Se tornan indispensables construcciones de sentido que generen - a nivel imaginario- ficciones de democracia funcionales al ejercicio de estos modos de dominación. Una opción es apelar al -cinismo republicano- en tanto prácticas discursivas que fragmentan o disimulan los principios del orden simbólico republicano para legitimar conductas políticas particularistas.

In this paper I analyze the continued existence of the Colombian state despite widespread crime and violence. Contemporary theorists posit that the state must subscribe to the image of an entity that is relatively autonomous from civil society and able to monopolize violence. However, citizen culture (cultura ciudadana), the innovative crime reduction policy I study here, is based on the premise that the state is unable to provide security for its inhabitants given the existence of a culture of violence. The policy encourages citizens to assume responsibility for their own security provision by adopting a culture of citizenship. I argue that citizen culture functions to legitimize the state despite ongoing violence by transferring responsibility for security provision from the state to civil society. It does so by inundating public space with educational spectacles, symbols, and slogans that circumscribe public debate and instruct citizen’s behavior. Citizen culture uses educational and symbolic programming to shift responsibility for security provision from the state to society, thereby altering the boundary between state and society and redefining the very essence of the modern state.

This paper is intended to explore modes of inquiry into culture and public discourse. To this end, the first part of the paper is devoted to situating discourses and practices within a broad notion of culture, a notion which goes beyond the cultural turn and focuses on culture in action, as well as on the dynamic dialogue between structure and action. In order to advance in a methodological proposal, the paper examines four different studies that propose differentiated strategies for making the concept of culture operational.

El artículo estudia el problema de la constitución de ciertos elementos identitarios de la cultura comunista argentina del período de entreguerras, a partir del análisis del itinerario intelectual y político del escritor Aníbal Ponce (1898-1938), y de las lecturas que de su figura se hicieron en la sociabilidad cultural comunista argentina y latinoamericana, para postular la hipótesis de que a través de Ponce se vehiculiza una forma de marxismo que tiende más allá de la apelación de la identidad con la clase obrera, a la exaltación de una continuidad entre un mítico pasado liberal argentino y un horizonte histórico que se visualiza en la URSS. Abstract The paper studies the problem of the constitution of identity elements of Communist culture interwar Argentina, from the analysis of the intellectual and political journey of the writer Aníbal Ponce (1898-1938). It also examines the interpretations of his figure became communist cultural sociability in Argentina and Latin America, to postulate the hypothesis that through Ponce conveys a form of Marxism that tends beyond the appeal of identity with the working class, to the exaltation of a continuity between a mythical past and a liberal Argentine historical horizon that is displayed in the USSR.

¿Cómo fue interpretada y justificada en la India la revuelta que dictó el fin de la Unión Dinástica? Esta interrogación será, en líneas generales, el hilo conductor de este texto, que busca explorar las dinámicas globales de la Restauración de 1640. Así, a lo largo de las siguientes páginas, se intenta analizar la constitución de un corpus documental formado por cartas, sermones y relatos de la proclamación, recuperando el vocabulario político que componía estos discursos y pensando la forma en que estos presentaban una lectura de la historia reciente del Estado de la India a través de la cual procuraban legitimar la ruptura con la Monarquía Hispánica.How was perceived in India the rebellion that put an end the Union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns? This question will be the guiding line of this article, which aims to understand the global dynamics of the Restauração of 1640. Throughout the next few pages, we seek to analyze the constitution of a documental corpus composed by letters, sermons and festival descriptions, interpreting both the political language adopted by these discourses and the view of the history of the «Estado da Índia» through which they sought to legitimize the rebellion.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the reasons that determine the satisfactory evaluation of Public Policies, especially on Rio Grande do Sul in two cities in the metropolitan region of Vale do Rio dos Sinos: Estância Velha and São Leopoldo. Therefore, we build a theoretical framework that takes into account synergistic both formal institutional implications itself (newinstitutionalism) as well as the value patterns local (political culture). Our working hypothesis is that social capital, own the local political culture existing in cities screen consists of an allied political institutions, because it favors positive evaluation of the performance of local Public Policies. The methodology uses the results of two quantitative surveys, household surveys type applied in Estância Velha and São Leopoldo, with probability samples totaling about 1200 questionnaires, with a sampling error of 4% and 95% confidence, between the months of January and April 2012 and June and July 2013, as well as documentary research the sites of these municipalities, IBGE, TCE and FEE (Foundation Economics and Statistics of Rio Grande do Sul).

Habermas aims to overcome the debate between liberalism and republicanism by integrating elements from both traditions and trying to outline a procedural understanding of democracy. This article discusses the theoretical implications of the habermasian model by doing a two level critique: first, analyzing the assumptions of the communicative action theory (in which the concept of deliberative politics stands), from Rancière’s notion of “disagreement”; and second, it identifies some limitations associated to the concept of deliberative politics itself and the related concept of “political culture”. Finally, it postulates that Habermas “proceduralism” is not entirely different from republicanism, bringing out some important theoretical consequences.

The cultural and societal diversity in the jurisprudence of living dangerously reflects equally diverse views on the deeper question of law’s moral purpose. What duty of care does (or does not) a community owe to those at the greatest risk of harm to their homes and persons? And is there also a right to be left alone—to assume all the risks and all the responsibilities for one’s own well-being, neither helped nor hindered by the community of which one is a part?This article reports comparative research being done on two states in the U.S. that have used the law to answer these morally freighted questions in very different ways, with specific regard to land use regulation in forested areas where wildfires have taken many lives and destroyed billions of dollars in residential property. It also suggests how this same analytic framework might be applied to transnational research in other legal cultures also endangered by catastrophic wildfires, such as Australia and Spain. La diversidad cultural y social en la jurisprudencia de los lugares en los que se vive bajo un peligro refleja equitativamente diferentes opiniones sobre el propósito moral de la ley, un tema más profundo. ¿Qué obligación tiene (o no) una comunidad de ofrecer atención a aquellos individuos en mayor riesgo de sufrir daños sobre sus hogares o personas? ¿Y existe también el derecho a que cada uno asuma todos los riesgos y todas las responsabilidades sobre su propio bienestar, sin que le ayude, o le moleste, la comunidad de la que forma parte?Este artículo presenta una investigación comparativa desarrollada en dos estados de EE.UU. que han utilizado la ley de manera muy diferente, para responder a estas preguntas de gran carga moral, con especial referencia a la regulación del uso de la tierra en zonas donde los incendios forestales han causado muchas víctimas personales además de pérdidas de millones de dólares en propiedades residenciales. También sugiere que este mismo marco analítico podría aplicarse a la investigación transnacional en otras culturas jurídicas también amenazadas por los incendios, como Australia y España.

The findings of a series of studies in the area of political communication during the 1990s questioned the answer media malaise offered for what was considered a constant in the academic debate: the negative relationship between media exposure and civic engagement. Some authors blame the media for "narcotizing" citizens, while other analysts say empirical evidence points to the opposite direction. This article approaches empirically the compared Spanish and Brazilian cases. More specifically, the study presents an approach to the impact of media consumption on institutional trust. The results point to different impacts of the media in each country, brought by the peculiarities of their political systems, as well as differences in media consumption behavior