Can Economic Success Propagate Autocracy? Experimental Evidence from Taiwan

Democratization is a learning process. When citizens in new democracies still consider democracy as economic tool instead of a principle, domestic economic fluctuation steers democratic legitimacy. However, why do citizens attribute economic performance to regime type rather than incumbent party? This article proposes that people would compare the performance of different regimes in the same era and update their democratic belief a salient economic success in an autocracy may undermine democratic belief of neighborhood countries. Through vignette survey experiment on 540 Taiwanese participants, this article illustrates the causal mechanism between economic performance, regime type, and democratic legitimacy. After Taiwanese participants, especially non-partisans, read the news of China’s economic success and its linkage to human right repression, they in average lowered their democratic belief. By replacing the subject in the news with UK, however, participants support democracy more. Further analysis rejects the possibility that the change of attitude comes from emotion. Result suggests that the relationship between economic performance and democratic belief is not merely a domestic issue, and provides an additional theory for explaining autocratic nostalgia in East Asia.