Differences of Democratic Quality Assessment and Popular Support for Democracy in China:The Democratic Demonstration Effect and the Attenuation Effects of Nationalism and Patriotism
Author: Hsin-che Wu, Osbern Huang
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Why do citizens in authoritarian countries support democracy more than the status quo? Modernization theory, the theory of redistribution, and the culturalist approach all focus on state-level social structural changes or on historical legacies. However, in this article, we bring international factors into the discussion and suggest that the “democratic demonstration effect” of global democracies, in addition to the two mechanisms of “coercion” and “competition”, is the key reason behind the strengthening of the wishes of the masses in autocracies to “imitate” democracies. Furthermore, due to greater “soft power” and successful “public diplomacy”, we believe that democratic superpowers, as well as democracies in neighbouring states, will have a greater chance to stimulate the aspirations for democracy of the citizens in authoritarian countries through their own democratic practices. At the same time, however, we also believe that patriotism and nationalism will weaken the “democracy demonstration effect” on popular support for democracy.
To illustrate our theory and test our hypothesis, we take Mainland China, the United States, and Taiwan as cases of authoritarian regimes, democratic powers, and democratic neighbours, and analyze three waves of public opinion data conducted in Mainland China in 2011, 2015, and 2019. We show that differences in democratic quality assessment between Mainland China and its democratic counterparts significantly raises people’s liberal and democratic values, and reduces their preference for one-party regimes. In addition, we have found that the patriotic and nationalistic sentiments of the Chinese people tends to neutralize the demonstration effects of the United States and Taiwan on popular support for democracy.