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Explaining Support for Democracy in East Asia

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Abstract

This paper aims to explain public support for democracy in six East Asian societies using the 2006 AsiaBarometer data. The project investigates whether East Asians’ support for democracy is primarily based on perceived political performance, such as satisfaction with human rights, or perceived economic performance. The work also examines whether East Asians’ support for democracy is constrained by traditional values or the postmodern value of post-materialism. The analysis shows that for three democracies, satisfaction with human rights, i.e. perceived political performance and an intrinsic value embodied in democracy, counts more in shaping public support for democracy than perceived economic performance. Because support based on perceived economic performance is more volatile than support based on firm commitment to human rights, this finding sheds positive light on the prospects for democratic stability for the three East Asian democracies. For three East Asian autocratic societies, democratic support is based more on perceived economic rather than political performance, casting a pall on the future prospects for democratization of them. That said, these dim prospects are balanced by the finding of very weak and negative effects of some traditional Asian values on democratic support.

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Notes

  1. It has been argued that Chinese Government’s interference with Hong Kong’s political development may have sapped the public support for democracy. However, past research has shown that Chinese government has not been a purely negative element in Hong Kong's democratization. The Chinese Government's potential threats to the core values of Hong Kong have unintentionally triggered the clamour for democratizing Hong Kong [44].

  2. Some recent research shows that perceived political performance counts more than perceived economic performance in shaping mass support for democracy [3, 9].

  3. For the Korean sample, every province has been covered except for Jeju province. For Taiwan, most of it has been covered except for Hualien and Taitung Hsien.

  4. Principle component analysis on the five human rights items produced one component in each country’s group. Standardized factor scores are used for regression analysis because it can capture the different weights each country group placed on satisfaction of human rights.

  5. This perception has been challenged by the research of Treisman [47].

  6. The “post-materialism” and “support for democracy” are composed of different constituent variables, and therefore no tautology is involved in using the former to explain the latter.

  7. It is measured by the choice of most important and second-most important selection regarding a) maintaining order in the nation; b) giving people more say in important government decisions; c) fighting rising prices; and d) protecting freedom of speech. A score of 1 is given to the materialistic choices a) and c), a score of 3 is given to the post-materialistic choices b) and d), and a score of 2 is given when one materialistic and one post-materialistic choice is made.

  8. Table 2 shows the r-squares adjusted by different blocks of independent variables listed in Table 1. To statistically examine the group(s) that contribute(s) the most to explaining the support for democracy within a nation, the Vuong (1989) test, a test of two non-nested linear regressions based on the level of r-square, was performed. Given that each block of factors contains the same number of independent variables, testing based on r-square rather than on the adjusted r-square is acceptable. The Vuong (1989) test is a Stata module written by Caskey [7].

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  1. Division of Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Ming Sing

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Sing, M. Explaining Support for Democracy in East Asia. East Asia 29, 215–234 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-012-9176-1

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