Is it worth to think of democracy? Images of collage students

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to know the image that college students have of democracy. A purposive sample was obtained from the Faculty of Professional Studies Zaragoza of the National Autonomous University of Mexico; this sample corresponds to the 5.25% of the enlisted students in the second half of 2012. The information gained from the question “is it worth to think of democracy? “ was presented, allowing us to identify aspects from the attitudinal dimension of social representations organized from the tension between being and what must be, as conflicting voices. 84.3% of the answers were affirmative, meanwhile 15.2% was negative. Upon analysis of content to the arguments given in the answers, it was found that in the first group an optimistic orientation was present, it transiting from an ideal optimism towards a bound or conditioned optimism and that democracy it’s valued by its purpose and achievements, as an instrument to resolve the country’s problems. The ones who responded that it isn’t worth to think about democracy showed an extreme pessimism, in which is present the authoritarian alternative. Finally the implications of these results are analyzed.