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Alternative legacies of authoritarianism: Pro-dictator bias in ideology
Abstract
How does an authoritarian past shape voters’ left-right orientation? Recent studies investigate “anti-dictator bias” in political ideology, where citizens in a former right-wing (left-wing) dictatorship may display a leftist (rightist) bias in their ideological self-identification. In this paper, I provide evidence for a “pro-dictator bias” where citizens hold ideological positions close to those of the dictator, depending on their experiences prior to transition. In countries with high economic growth under dictatorship and without violent ruling party ouster, authoritarian successors could continue mobilizing the popular base and invoke positive sentiment on the past in democratic elections. Such positive sentiment can facilitate individual ideological orientation close to the ideological label of the former dictatorship. I test this hypothesis by combining individual- and country-level data covering 1985 to 2018 from 48 countries. I demonstrate that voters in countries with high economic growth during dictatorship and without violent party exit are more likely to have pro-dictator bias in ideology. I further show that voters in former developmental states show pro-dictator bias from the history of economic growth and more peaceful transition. The findings emphasize the role of pre-transition features in shaping alternative legacies on voter attitudes in post-authoritarian societies.
... Because the successor parties are likely to mobilize their supporters by sustaining authoritarian legacies based on shared memories (Elçi 2022), blind nationalism formed during the past regime can promote voter turnout even in a new regime. Although political orientations from the days of authoritarianism may become biased against the old regime (Dinas and Northmore-Ball 2020; Frantzeskakis and Sato 2020), pro-dictator bias can also appear in new democracies (Jhee 2008;Kim-Leffingwell 2022). In particular, one source that produces favorable attitudes toward the past regime is economic success, which is easily transmittable to democratic competition (Miller 2021). ...
... However, our understanding of the relationship in new democracies remains limited because existing key findings come from advanced democracies. As the burgeoning literature on authoritarian legacies in new democracies suggests (Dinas and Northmore-Ball 2020;Frantzeskakis and Sato 2020;Hong, Park, and Yang 2022;Kim-Leffingwell 2022;Miller 2021), examining different underlying mechanisms of political behavior in different political is imperative. In this research, we analyzed the relationship between constructive and blind national pride and voter turnout in new democracies. ...
... First, our findings suggest that it is necessary to take the role of authoritarian legacies into account when analyzing political behavior in new democracies. In line with an emerging literature (Hong, Park, and Yang 2022;Kim-Leffingwell 2022), we provide additional evidence that the legacies from the past can shape micro-level foundations of political behavior in new democracies. Second, the evidence presented here that behavioral outcomes appear to differ between advanced and new democracies, despite the same measures of constructive and blind national pride, implies that nationalism contains contextual elements that influence the local meaning of the term (e.g., Powers 2022). ...
In new democracies, what is the role of nationalism in terms of democratic behavior such as voter turnout? Previous studies have found that, in Western democracies, constructive national pride increases voter turnout, while blind national pride decreases it. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to new democracies. Given different political contexts, we argue that blind national pride can boost turnout in some new democracies that have lingering authoritarian legacies. Using the case of South Korea, we offer a theory about the relationship between blind national pride and voter turnout. We show that, in contrast to the West, blind national pride is positively associated with turnout in South Korea, and that the relationship appears more robust among both older cohorts, who experienced authoritarianism directly in the recent past, and those with conservative ideologies.
... During the 1960s and 1970s, both countries adopted a developmental-state model and successfully industrialized their economies, which transformed the war-ridden countries into key powerhouses of manufacturing and heavy industries in the world (Haggard 2018). While both countries have democratized at the end of the 20th century, both countries have inherited strong authoritarian legacies, with former authoritarian ruling parties having maintained their political dominance as a major party in two-party competition (Kim-Leffingwell 2023). ...
... 5 During the 2022 local election in Taiwan, Chiang Wan-an, grandson of CCK, was elected mayor of the capital city Taipei by expressing his commitment to follow the "Chiang Ching-kuo route." 6 Many voters in the two countries still harbor sympathy for the former dictators and rate them as the best political leader in history (Kim-Leffingwell 2023). The strong presence of authoritarian nostalgia among supporters of authoritarian successor parties contrasts authoritarian rejection among supporters of the main center-left party in the two countries. ...
Objective
Why do democratic voters feel nostalgia for an authoritarian past? This article introduces a dispositional framework for authoritarian nostalgia, showing that in addition to situational factors, an enduring source of sentimental longing for the authoritarian past may very well be rooted in a person's core psychological structure.
Methods
I use mixed‐methods approach with data collection from South Korea and Taiwan. Using linear regression models with interaction terms, I analyze the contingent effects of personality traits on authoritarian nostalgia.
Results
I find that people high in emotional stability are likely to be nostalgic and that the trait's effects are greater than those from other traits traditionally associated with authoritarian ideology. Results from the interaction model show that these impacts are more pronounced with weak and moderate democrats but not with strong democrats.
Conclusion
People high in emotional stability are nostalgic due to their longing for the proven socioeconomic performance of the past. In addition, the democratic values of individual citizens can constrict how personality shapes voters’ view of former dictatorships.
... While these values were introduced to consolidate symbolic power and to ensure the political security of a dictator, ALPs maintain issue dominance in these traditional policy goals even after democratic transition (Cheng and Huang 2018), and this ideology continues to serve to satisfy the psychological need for resistance to change and ambiguity among voters in post-authoritarian societies. These ideological legacies from an authoritarian past amplify the epistemic motives of cognitive rigidity among ALP partisans and strengthen their attachment to and partisan bias towards ALPs (Kim-Leffingwell 2022). ...
... With an emphasis on authoritarian and conservative ideologies, I predict greater partisan bias among supporters of former ruling parties, especially parties from former right-wing dictatorships that emphasized nationalist, populist, and anticommunist ideologies (Dinas and Northmore-Ball 2020; Kim-Leffingwell 2022). Of forty-five former authoritarian regimes, twenty countries adopted such rightist ideologies as ruling principles, while twenty-five countries employed leftist ideologies. ...
What explains the lack of electoral consequences for corrupt politicians? Building on studies of motivated reasoning and asymmetric partisan bias, this article highlights the importance of partisan differences in how voters interpret corruption convictions and make voting decisions. I contend that in post-authoritarian democracies, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties (ALPs) are less likely to punish corrupt copartisan incumbents compared to supporters of other parties faced with equally corrupt copartisan incumbents. While voters of all kinds appear likely to ignore corruption among copartisan incumbents, supporters of authoritarian legacy parties are particularly likely to do so. Using original datasets from South Korea, this study shows empirical evidence of the lack of corruption voting for ALP partisans across three legislative elections. This article further finds partisan discrepancies and a striking lack of corruption voting among authoritarian legacy partisans.
... First, citizens of post-authoritarian democracies may have developed distinct mass attitudes whose positive sentiment to existing regimes and ideological orientation could have been shaped by a combination of historical legacies of authoritarianism, nostalgic rhetoric of successor parties and failure of democratic institutions (Frantzeskakis & Sato, 2020;Kang, 2018;Miller, 2021;Dinas & Northmore-Ball, 2020;Simpser et al., 2018). For instance, post-authoritarian citizens may possess pro-dictator ideological bias which may likely shape their favourable assessment of their authoritarian past (Kim-Leffingwell, 2022). This could also help explain why there is much public support for strong leaders (usually men) nowadays (Donovan, 2021;Foa & Mounk, 2017;Sprong et al., 2019). ...
... Because leaders such as Jokowi Widodo are still able to deliver economically despite persisting inequality and illiberal tendencies (Hutagalung et al., 2019;Mujani & William Liddle, 2021), citizens remain confident about their existing political institutions. More importantly, ordinary Indonesians in their post-authoritarian landscape may have imbibed a pro-dictator ideological bias that lingers to the current times (Kim-Leffingwell, 2022). This could very well explain mass publics' agreeable political behaviour especially towards political leaders who respond to their economic needs despite displaying nondemocratic tendencies. ...
How does support for strong leadership affect institutional trust in post-authoritarian democracies? Studies suggest that fostering trust in public institutions is contingent upon citizens’ favourable evaluation of the government’s institutional performance, whereas individual’s cultural orientations and political values are seldom given much interest. However, the resurgence of leaders with ‘populist’ tendencies presents an empirical puzzle, which may reveal intriguing political patterns in the context of comparative democratization (and autocratization). This study theorizes that citizens’ need for economic deliverance and social stability develops agreeable attitudes towards prevailing public institutions even though political incumbents project authoritarian tendencies. Using public opinion data from the seventh wave of World Values Survey (WVS7), this study finds that citizens in Indonesia and the Philippines—two of the region’s post-authoritarian democracies i.e. fragile democracies with spells of authoritarian rule manifest high support for a political system with a strong leader unconstrained with electoral and congressional intervention. Consequently, this favourable attitude makes them more likely to express higher institutional confidence. Overall, the findings shed light on the paradoxes of contemporary politics confronted not only with authoritarian resilience, political illiberalism and personalist rule but also of the enduring nondemocratic psychological disposition among citizens in settings with troubled democratic transitions.
... However, Caramani and Manucci (2019) and Rossell Hayes and Dudek (2020) suggest that this stigmatization process can be ineffective. In some cases, authoritarian legacies even foster pro-dictator sentiments, especially where the dictatorship had positive distributive consequences (Hong et al. 2023;Kim-Leffingwell 2023). ...
Is authoritarian nostalgia stigmatized? Previous research suggests that authoritarian experiences leave lasting marks of stigma, serving as a warning against the authoritarian ideology. However, the recent success of farright parties in democracies with histories of fascist rule and widespread concerns about democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe challenge this assumption. I address this puzzle by investigating the interaction between memory and politics, focusing on the (lack of) stigmatization of authoritarian nostalgia. In an original survey, I map Italy’s memory of the fascist past, measuring public opinion of the dictatorship and its memorialization, and then test whether memories favorable to the past dictatorship are stigmatized. Using three experimental strategies manipulating social pressure, I do not find evidence of preference falsification regarding authoritarian nostalgia. Italian public opinion acknowledges a predominant anti-fascist memory of the country’s past, while also recognizing that this narrative is contested by a significant revisionist minority. Moreover, the memorialization of the fascist past appears partisan and not fully inclusive. Further research is needed to understand how collective memory can form binding social norms, its causes, and its consequences.
... This line of inquiry could build upon the works of comparative scholars examining authoritarian nostalgia among mass voters in various post-authoritarian democracies. 72 The Philippines, despite being recognized as Asia's oldest 'electoral' democracy 73 , similar to many Southeast Asian nations, is often seen as lacking true democracy. This perception arises from the enduring presence of authoritarianism and a persistent citizen desire for strong leadership. ...
The electoral victory of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the ousted Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., has sparked significant debate among academics and commentators. This outcome underscores the need to refine prevailing analytical frameworks, particularly within the broader context of authoritarian resurgence in fragile democracies. This paper critically evaluates existing perspectives on Marcos Jr.’s victory, including arguments centered on historical revisionism, social media disinformation, and the “Duterte effect,” and advances supplemental theoretical approaches. We argue that the Marcos family’s political comeback illustrates the persistent influence of latent authoritarian values among citizens in post-authoritarian democracies. In addition, we identify three key potential determinants of authoritarian resurgence: (1) pro-dictator bias, (2) risk-aversion and preference for continuity, and (3) the role of multiple memory systems in shaping electoral behavior. By proposing these analytical perspectives and key areas of focus, this study aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of Philippine politics and democratization, while contributing to the broader discourse on contemporary challenges facing post-authoritarian democracies worldwide, marked by authoritarian nostalgia and democratic decline.
Comparative politics scholars have long noted the presence of authoritarian nostalgia in emerging democracies. In this paper, we explore how the combination of nostalgia and authoritarianism influenced public attitudes within the U.S. context. Specifically, we use a module from the Cooperative Election Study to explore the relationship between nostalgia and four measures of authoritarian attitudes. Our findings show that nostalgia has the expected relationship in all four models. Nostalgic Americans are more likely to support political strongmen, violations of rules, norms, and institutions, and the use of political violence against political opponents. This paper contributes to the literature on authoritarian nostalgia by establishing a link between nostalgia and authoritarianism in an established democracy without a recent authoritarian past.
This study aims to provide empirical evidence on the celebrity culture i.e., the pervasive fascination of an audience to public figures in the Philippines. We used data from the seventh wave of World Values Survey (n = 1,200) to establish whether celebrity culture exists in the Philippines. We then tested whether citizens' level of education affects one's attribution of confidence to an institution dominated by celebrities, i.e., television over those institutions governed by experts, i.e., universities. Lastly, we performed a sentiment analysis in the comments of a YouTube video from a well-known celebrity Toni Gonzaga on her interview with Bongbong Marcos, the son of the late dictator, to investigate how strong celebrity influence is in the country traversing the social and political arena. Results showed that there is a significant difference between citizens' level of confidence in television and universities; and that lower levels of education are more likely to be confident of the television as an institution. The public sentiment of citizens on the infamous video was overwhelmingly positive. While the results underlined the strong celebrity influence in the country, our paper not only reinforces the need greater role of education for fostering democratic citizenry but also bears significant implications for the mediatization of politics in developing democracies.
Are authoritarian successor party (ASP) supporters more likely to protest? I propose that ASP supporters are less likely to protest in general. The post-democratization mobilization environment is shaped upon the pre-democratization mobilization basis. During the pre-democratization period, protest was organized around the democracy movement. Thus, protest tactics and networks were accumulated through it. As former authoritarian ruling party supporters, ASP supporters are less likely to have legacies of participating in the democracy movement, which prevents them from accessing the accumulated protest resources from the democracy movement. However, I argue that this negative association varies based on the ASP qualities and supporters’ age. Supporters of ASPs that maintain strong pre-democratization legacies are more likely to participate in protests than supporters of ASPs that do not strongly highlight their authoritarian legacies. Also, when the ASPs’ characteristics are considered, older ASP supporters are more likely to participate in protests than younger supporters. Using both single-level and multilevel statistical analyses, I examine four Asian countries with politically powerful ASPs and find evidence supporting my hypotheses. Lastly, I compare two South Korean mass movements, the Candlelight movement and the Taegeukgi rallies to unpack the relationships between ASP supporters, protest resources, and mobilization. This study reveals authoritarian legacies among post-democratization citizens through ASP supporters’ protesting behavior.
In recent years, electoral support for the far-right has increased dramatically across the world. This phenomenon is especially acute in some new democracies; however, little attention has been devoted to the legacies of past authoritarian ideologies. We argue that the ideology of the past regime affects far-right support because voters that were politically socialized under authoritarianism will be biased against its ideological brand. To test this, we conduct both an individual-level analysis across 20 countries between 1996-2018 using a difference-indifference estimation and a country-level analysis using data from 39 democracies between 1980-2018. We demonstrate that voters that were socialized under right-wing dictatorships are less likely to support far-right parties compared to citizens that were socialized under different circumstances. Moreover, support for far-right parties is significantly lower in countries that transitioned from right-wing autocracies. Findings are discussed in light of the contribution to the far-right movement literature.
We propose a distinction between inclusionary and exclusionary autocratic ruling strategies and develop novel theoretical propositions on the legacy that these strategies leave on citizens' political attitudes once the autocratic regime broke down. Using data of 1.3 million survey respondents from 71 countries and Hierarchical Age-Period-Cohort models we estimate between and within cohort differences in citizens' democratic support. We find that inclusionary regimes-with wider redistribution of socioeconomic and political benefits-leave a stronger anti-democratic legacy than exclusionary regimes on the political attitudes of their citizens. Similarly, citizens who were part of the winning group in an autocracy are more critical with democracy compared to citizens who were part of discriminated groups. This paper contributes to our understanding about how autocracies affect the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens.
Why do some former authoritarian elites return to power after democratization through re-election or re-appointment to political office, or by assuming board positions in state-owned or major private enterprises, whereas others do not and still others face punishment? This paper investigates this question using an original dataset on constitutional origins and the fate of the upper echelon of outgoing authoritarian elites across Latin America from 1900-2015. I find that authoritarian elites from outgoing regimes that impose a holdover constitution that sticks through democratization are more likely to regain political or economic power-especially through national positions where the potential payoffs are largest-and less likely to face severe or nominal punishment. I also find a positive role for political capital among former elites. These results are robust to alternative explanations of authoritarian elites' fate and using instrumental variables to address potential endogeneity. The findings have important implications for democratic consolidation and quality.
Twenty-five years after the fall of communism in Poland, a considerable number of citizens manifest nostalgia for the communist times. In this article, we approach this phenomenon within the framework of autobiographical memory and decide between two sets of hypotheses, one predicting that postcommunist nostalgia is experienced mostly by people who are dissatisfied with the present time (transformation “losers”) and the other predicting that it is the memory of the happy and most recollected past, and memories of particular decades of communism, that mostly trigger nostalgia. The study, carried out on a representative sample of Poles who remembered communism, provided stronger confirmation of the “negative present” hypothesis, but the positive past is also shown to matter. The decade of communism whose memory turned out to predict nostalgia the best was the 1980s and not, as predicted, the 1970s.
In this paper, an examination is made of Jakarta's changing political and economic position since the mid 1990s. This period of transformation is dealt with in four parts: the first relates to spatial and administrative changes to Jakarta and its wider urban region; the second considers the impact and implications of the 1997 Asian financial crisis (krismon) and ensuing political transformation which saw the resignation of President Suharto; the third part details the decentralisation laws of 1999 and their implications for urban and regional development; and the fourth considers the context of the 2008-10 global financial crisis (krisis global) in which 'neo-liberalisme' became a political slur in Indonesia, ironically at the same time as the governor of Jakarta declared 'global city' aspirations.
Authoritarian ruling parties are expected to be exceptionally resistant to democratization. Yet some of the strongest authoritarian parties in the world have not resisted democratization, but have embraced it. This is because their raison d'etre is to continue ruling, not necessarily to remain authoritarian. Democratization requires that ruling parties hold free and fair elections, but not that they lose them. Authoritarian ruling parties can thus be incentivized to concede democratization from a position of exceptional strength as well as extreme weakness. This “conceding-to-thrive” scenario is most likely to unfold when regimes (1) possess substantial antecedent political strengths and resource advantages, (2) suffer ominous setbacks signaling that they have passed their apex of domination, and (3) pursue new legitimation strategies to arrest their incipient decline. We illustrate this heretofore neglected alternative democratization pathway through a comparative-historical analysis of three Asian developmental states where ruling parties have democratized from varying positions of considerable strength: Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia. We then consider the implications of our analysis for three “candidate cases” in developmental Asia where ruling parties have not yet conceded democratization despite being well-positioned to thrive were they to do so: Singapore, Malaysia, and the world's most populous dictatorship, China.
Why do some autocrats survive for decades, and others fall soon after taking power? The authors argue that when authoritarian rulers need to solicit the cooperation of outsiders or deter the threat of rebellion, they rely on political institutions. Partisan legislatures incorporate potential opposition forces, giving them a stake in the ruler's survival. By broadening the basis of support for autocrats, these institutions lengthen their tenures. An analysis of all authoritarian rulers in power during the 1946-1996 period provides evidence of the effect of nominally democratic institutions on their political survival.
The 2016-2017 Candlelight Revolution was one of the most significant events in recent South Korean politics, but little attention has been paid to the powerful conservative counter-movement that accompanied and followed the candlelight protests. This counter-movement was symbolized by demonstrations by flag-carriers who found Park Geun-Hye's impeachment and Moon Jae-In's inauguration incomprehensible. They argued that Park was innocent, called for her release from prison, and claimed that Moon's election was illegitimate. An analysis of speeches made during conservative counter-protests between 2016 and 2019 illustrates how these activists reject the values of a new era in South Korean political and economic life. Instead, their speeches conveyed a clear desire to have the legacy of the industrialization generation recognized in contemporary South Korea. These flag-carriers are evidence that a marginalized set of desires and aspirations about South Korean nationalism and identity coexist with the progressive views of the candlelight protesters. The persistence of such an intense and partisan worldview, however, poses a threat to the future of liberal democracy in South Korea. ARTICLE HISTORY
This major study examines one of the most surprising developments in East Central European politics after the democratic transitions of 1989: the completely unexpected regeneration of the former communist parties. After the collapse of the communist regimes in 1989, these ruling communist parties seemed consigned to oblivion. However, confounding scholarly and popular expectations, all of these parties survived. Some have even returned to power. This in-depth, comparative study systematically analyzes the trajectories of four cases: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary (with additional examination of other communist party successors). Relying on extensive, and unprecedented, primary research, this analysis employs a consistent analytical framework that combines the peculiarities of the post-socialist cases with broad theoretical concerns of institutional analysis, democratic transitions and consolidation, and party politics.
Communist regimes were avowedly leftist authoritarian regimes, a relative rarity among autocracies. The growing literature on regime legacies would lead us to expect that postcommunist citizens would be more likely to exhibit “left-authoritarian” attitudes than their counterparts elsewhere. Finding that this is the case, we rely on 157 surveys from 88 countries to test if a living through Communism legacy model can account for this surplus of left-authoritarian attitudes. Employing both aggregate and micro-level analyses, we find strong support for the predictions of this model. Moving beyond previous legacy studies, we then test a variety of hypothesized mechanisms to explain how exposure to communist rule could have led to the regime congruent left-authoritarian attitudes. Of the mechanisms tested, greater state penetration of society is associated with a strong socialization effect and religious attendance—and in particular attending Catholic religious services—is associated with weaker socialization effects.
How do autocratic ruling parties gain power? What predicts their durability and how they fall? This article introduces the Autocratic Ruling Parties Dataset, the first comprehensive data set on the founding origins, modes of gaining and losing power, ruling tenures, and other characteristics of autocratic ruling parties. It covers all ruling parties in the world from 1940 to 2015. Contrary to common assumptions, most ruling parties are not created by sitting dictators, but follow a range of paths to power that influence their style and duration of rule. To illustrate the data’s uses, the article confirms that ruling parties stabilize autocracies. Further, parties’ origins and histories matter, with revolutionary and foreign-imposed parties the most durable and parties empowered through elections the least durable. By recognizing ruling parties’ heterogeneity, histories, and potential autonomy from individual dictators, the data can contribute to open questions on autocratic politics, regime stability, and democratization.
When autocratic ruling parties accede to democratization, they do not always fade away into history. Following forty-one transitions since 1940, including those in Mexico, Taiwan, Bulgaria and Ghana, the ruling party survived and won power after democratization. Why do some former autocratic parties prosper under democracy while others quickly dissolve? What effect does this have on democratic survival? This article uses original data to predict the post-transition fates of eighty-four autocratic ruling parties through 2015. Whereas extant theories emphasize radical reinvention and outsider struggle, the author argues that success is instead about maintaining ruling-party advantages into the democratic period. Parties succeed when they have authoritarian legacies that easily translate to democratic competition, such as broad programmatic experience, strong organization and policy success. In addition, democratic institutions that disadvantage new parties and actors benefit autocratic parties. Lastly, an instrumental variables design shows that autocratic party success negatively impacts democratic survival and quality.
How do the labels left and right take on meaning in new democracies? Existing explanations point to the universality of the left–right scheme or, reversely, emphasize regionally dominant social cleavages. We propose an alternative legacy-focused theory based on two observations: Dictatorships are not ideologically neutral and are negatively evaluated by most citizens and elites after democratization. These premises lead us to expect that when the authoritarian regime is associated with the left (right), the citizens of a new democracy will display an antileft (antiright) bias in their left–right self-identification. We test this hypothesis across Latin American and European new democracies. We find significant bias, which in the case of new democracies following left-wing regimes is concealed due to intercohort heterogeneity. Although older cohorts denote a positive bias, cohorts born after Stalin’s era denote negative bias against the left. Consistent with our expectations, repression exacerbates this bias whereas indoctrination mitigates it. Finally, we look at how these biases apply to party preferences. The findings have important implications for understanding authoritarian legacies and party system development in new democracies.
Cambridge Core - Latin American Government, Politics and Policy - Life after Dictatorship - edited by James Loxton
It has long been assumed that the historical legacy of Soviet Communism would have an important effect on post-communist states. However, prior research has focused primarily on the institutional legacy of communism. Communism’s Shadow instead turns the focus to the individuals who inhabit post-communist countries, presenting a rigorous assessment of the legacy of communism on political attitudes. Post-communist citizens hold political, economic, and social opinions that consistently differ from individuals in other countries. Grigore Pop-Eleches and Joshua Tucker introduce two distinct frameworks to explain these differences, the first of which focuses on the effects of living in a post-communist country, and the second on living through communism. Drawing on large-scale research encompassing post-communist states and other countries around the globe, the authors demonstrate that living through communism has a clear, consistent influence on why citizens in post-communist countries are, on average, less supportive of democracy and markets and more supportive of state-provided social welfare. The longer citizens have lived through communism, especially as adults, the greater their support for beliefs associated with communist ideology-the one exception being opinions regarding gender equality. A thorough and nuanced examination of communist legacies’ lasting influence on public opinion, Communism’s Shadow highlights the ways in which political beliefs can outlast institutional regimes.
Why, a quarter century after democratization, are Korean citizens so nostalgic about the former authoritarian Park Chung-hee government? What are the implications of this support for Korea's democratic deepening? To answer these questions, I offer empirical analyses of selected data from the Korea Democracy Barometer 2010 survey that confirm the relevance of two dimensions of political support to authoritarian nostalgia in Korea: the life biography model and the economic performance model at the system level. The results suggest a double-sided phenomenon: on the one hand, nostalgia based on a retrospective collective memory; on the other, citizens' critical view of the performance deficits of post-Park democratic governments in dealing with inequality in Korean society. As the findings elucidate, in spite of the challenges they face, emergent democratic governments must perform more effectively if they are to win citizens' support. KEYWORDS: democratic performance, Park Chung-hee nostalgia, Korean democracy, inequality, democratic consolidation.
Why have seemingly similar African countries developed very different forms of democratic party systems? Despite virtually ubiquitous conditions that are assumed to be challenging to democracy – low levels of economic development, high ethnic heterogeneity, and weak state capacity – nearly two dozen African countries have maintained democratic competition since the early 1990s. Yet the forms of party system competition vary greatly: from highly stable, nationally organized, well-institutionalized party systems to incredibly volatile, particularistic parties in systems with low institutionalization. To explain their divergent development, Rachel Beatty Riedl points to earlier authoritarian strategies to consolidate support and maintain power. The initial stages of democratic opening provides an opportunity for authoritarian incumbents to attempt to shape the rules of the new multiparty system in their own interests, but their power to do so depends on the extent of local support built up over time. The particular form of the party system that emerges from the democratic transition is sustained over time through isomorphic competitive pressures embodied in the new rules of the game, the forms of party organization and the structure of competition that shape party and voter behavior alike.
This book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocratic regime. Voters could not simply ‘throw the rascals out of office’ because their choices were constrained by a series of strategic dilemmas that compelled them to support the autocrats. The book also explores the factors that led to the demise of the PRI. The theory sheds light on the logic of ‘electoral autocracies’, among the most common type of autocracy, and is the only systematic treatment in the literature today dealing with this form of autocracy. © Beatriz Magaloni 2006 and Cambridge University Press, 2009. All rights reserved.
Authoritarian successor parties, or parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy, have become prominent actors in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America since the third wave. What explains their prevalence? What are their effects on democracy? This article argues that such parties often benefit from authoritarian inheritance: they may inherit valuable resources from former dictatorships that, paradoxically, help them to thrive under democracy. Despite their undemocratic origins, the article argues that their effects on democracy are not entirely negative, but double-edged. © 2015 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press.
From Bangkok to Manila, Taipei, Seoul, and Ulaanbaatar, East Asia's third-wave democracies are in distress. Data from the first and second Asian Barometer Surveys can help us systematically to assess the extent of normative commitment to democracy that citizens feel in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Compared to levels of popular support for democracy, strength of authoritarian detachment, and satisfaction with the performance of democracy observed in other regions, our six East Asian democracies appear on a par with similarly situated societies elsewhere in the world. The lesson is that this form of government must win citizens' support through better performance.
Modern East Asia is a junkyard for Western theories of economic development and political modernization, and it is wise to remind ourselves of the area’s profound exceptionalism whenever approaching a theory-intensive subject like democracy. Marx’s great scheme of a progression from primitive communism to slave society and then on to feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and communism cracked on its obvious irrelevance to the history of classical Asia (viz. Oriental despotism, the Asiatic mode of production, and all that), which suggests that Marx’s analysis of the role of classes in development and revolution is equally overgeneralized.(1) Similarly, Weber’s discovery of the Protestant ethic as the lynchpin of capitalism in the West led him to write what may well be the world’s most interesting wrong book, The Religion of China, in which Confucianism is held to be a major obstacle to the development of capitalism.Needless to say, the spate of books claiming that there is a positive correlation between Confucianism and East Asian capitalism is a tribute to Weber’s influence, not necessarily to the insight of the authors.® My own view is close to that of Winston Davis: religion, race, and primordial characteristics have practically nothing to do with economic development except insofar as they can be used to justify the inequalities it produces.(4) In more recent times so-called dependencia and World Systems theories foundered on the economic performances of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.^ And now the appearance of democracy in many different East Asian contexts is again posing anomalies for Western theory.
A debate, fanned by the experiences of South Korea and Taiwan, persists over how economic growth leads to democratization. This article provides a theoretical model showing that economic downturns lead to democratization and evaluates the conclusion systematically with data from South Korea and Taiwan. The model and results corroborate the hypothesis that economic downturns motivate government and non-government actors to pursue political reforms and democratization and highlight several contributions. They show democratization as the outcome of strategic responses pursued under weak economic conditions. Further, the findings are robust to alternative specifications of democratization. The results also bring empirics into line with theoretical expectations about democratization while simultaneously revealing that it is not a panacea for lack of support.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, most Russians had lived their entire lives in a quintessentially authoritarian culture. Having been socialized in this environment, how could citizens acquire the attitudes and behaviors necessary to support a new, more pluralistic regime? Cultural theories of political learning emphasize the primacy of childhood socialization and hold that altering initial attitudes is a decades-long process that depends on generational replacement. Institutional theories emphasize adult relearning in response to changing circumstances regardless of socialization. Lifetime learning integrates the competing perspectives. Multilevel models using New Russia Barometer data from 1992 to 2005 confirm the persistence of some generational differences in Russian political attitudes but demonstrate even larger effects resulting from adult relearning. Lifetime learning provides the most comprehensive account and suggests that Russians would quickly acquire the attitudes and behaviors appropriate to democracy—if Russian elites supply more authentic democratic institutions.