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Value Cleavages, Issues, and Partisanship in East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Aie-Rie Lee
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Extract

This article examines how the social transformation in many East Asian democracies is altering the value priorities of their publics, and how these values are affecting party choice. Our analyses are based on the newest wave of the World Values Survey. We find that the emergence of an authoritarian-libertarian value cleavage is clearly associated with level of development, but these values emerge well before what prior research indicated. In addition, we show that party loyalty among the East Asian citizenry is shaped by a mix of social values, economic issues, left-right ideology, distrust in governmental institutions, and proclivities to engage in protest activities.

Keywords

value changeauthoritarianlibertarianeconomic votingpartisanshipvoting
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Party Choice and Partisanship in East Asia , August 2007 , pp. 251 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

1. Jang, D. J., “East Asian Perspectives on Liberal Democracy: A Critical Evaluation.” In Ahn, C. and Fort, B., eds., Democracy in Asia, Europe and the World. Toward a Universal Definition (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2006), pp. 37–56; Dalton, Russell and Ong, Nhu-Ngoc, “Authority Orientations and Support for Democracy in East Asia.” In Dalton, Russell and Shin, Doh Chull, eds., Citizens, Democracy and Markets Around the Pacific Rim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 50–72.Google Scholar

2. Inglehart, Ronald, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Inglehart, Ronald and Welzel, Christian, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Welzel, Christian and Inglehart, Ronald, “The Human Development Model of Democracy: East Asia in Perspective.” In Dalton, and Shin, , eds., Citizens, Democracy and Markets, pp. 21–49; Wang, Zheng-Xu and Tan, Ern-Ser, “Self-Expression, ‘Asian Values,’ and Democracy.” In Dalton, and Shin, , eds., Citizens, Democracy and Markets, pp. 50–72.Google Scholar

3. For a detailed discussion on the A-L value cleavage, refer to Flanagan, Scott C. and Lee, Aie-Rie, “Value Change and Democratic Reform in Japan and Korea,” Comparative Political Studies 33, no. 5 (2000): 626–659; Flanagan, Scott C. and Lee, Aie-Rie, “The New Politics, Culture Wars, and the Authoritarian-Libertarian Value Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies 36, no. 3 (2003): 235–270; Flanagan, Scott C. and Lee, Aie-Rie, “The Causes and Socio-Political Implications of Value Change in the Advanced Industrial Democracies.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, 1990.Google Scholar

4. See Flanagan, Scott C. and Lee, Aie-Rie, “Modernization and the Emergence of the Authoritarian Libertarian Value Cleavage.” Paper presented at the annual meeting at the Southern Political Science Association, Tampa, Florida, 1991. In later work, Inglehart has adopted the broader idea of “self-expressive values” in his comparison of developed and developing nations, and this is conceptually close to our earlier framework of A-L values. See Inglehart, and Welzel, , Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. Google Scholar

5. Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan are included in the 1995–1997 WVS; Singapore and South Korea are in the 1999–2001 survey, but we could not include them because that survey lacked the party preference question.Google Scholar

6. Flanagan, Scott C., “Value Cleavages, Contextual Influences, and the Vote.” In Flanagan, Scott et al., The Japanese Voter (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 84–142; Lee, Aie-Rie and Glasure, Yong U., “Party Identifiers in South Korea,” Asian Survey 35, no. 4 (1995): 367–376.Google Scholar

7. Norpoth, Helmut, Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Lafay, Jean-Dominique, eds., Economics and Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991); Duch, Ray, “A Developmental Model of Heterogeneous Economic Voting in New Democracies,” American Political Science Review 95 (2001): 895–910.Google Scholar

8. See Flanagan, and Lee, , “Value Change and Democratic Reform in Japan and Korea”; Flanagan, and Lee, , “The New Politics, Culture Wars, and the Authoritarian-Libertarian Value Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies”; Flanagan, and Lee, , “The Causes and Socio-Political Implications of Value Change in the Advanced Industrial Democracies.” Google Scholar

9. We only chose items that are available for every nation included in this study.Google Scholar

10. We recoded all twelve items presented in Table 1 so that for the six authoritarian items, the high end of the scale is the authoritarian response, and for the six libertarian items, the high end of the scale is the libertarian response. The independence and imagination item combines two questions. Also Ingle-hart's materialist and postmaterialist (M-PM) items were used by coding each response option in the sets of four choices as 2 (if it was the respondent's first priority), 1 (if it was the respondent's second priority), and 0 (if the respondent did not select the item). The three questions on more say in government, job, and community were combined into a single item.Google Scholar

11. We also developed a measure for this dimension from several questions about the extent to which the respondents felt that various kinds of individual actions could be justified. That is, to what extent individuals should be restrained from exercising their own preferences at the expense of society or others. The “self-interest over common good” scale is coded so that the always justified response is the highest. That is, to what extent are respondents willing to condone actions in which there is no victim other than the state or society in general? Libertarians are more likely to condone cheating on taxes, avoiding a fare on public transport, and accepting a bribe.Google Scholar

12. We used unrotated principal components analyses to generate the factor results, using pairwise deletion of missing cases. Table 1 presents the average number of cases.Google Scholar

13. See the articles by Dalton, Russell J. and Tanaka, Aiji in this volume; Hsieh, John Fuh-Sheng and Newman, David, eds., How Asia Votes (New York: Chatham House Publishers, 2002); Mainwaring, Scott and Zoco, Edurne, “Political Sequences and the Stabilization of Interparty Competition,” Party Politics 13 (March 2007): 155–178.Google Scholar

14. The sample sizes used in this analysis are: Japan, 316 (LDP), 312 (DJP), and 294 (no party to support) Taiwan, 320 (NP), 107 (DPP), and 267 (other response) Philippines, 142 (LDP), 182 (LAMMP), 143 (Lakas-NUCD-UMDP), and 254 (did not vote) Indonesia, 211 (PDI), 214 (GOLKAR), and 94 (PPP) Australia, 622 (Labor) and 640 (Liberal) New Zealand, 393 (Labour) and 306 (National) Google Scholar

15. Flanagan, and Lee, , “Value Change and Democratic Reform”; Flanagan, and Lee, , “The New Politics, Culture Wars, and the Authoritarian-Libertarian Value Change”; Inglehart, Ronald, Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

16. These four items were factor analyzed and all load heavily on a first unrotated factor and hence were combined into single scale. Also see Shin, Doh Chull and Dalton, Russell, “Exploring Weber's Theory of Capitalism in Confucian East Asia.” In Dalton, and Shin, , Citizens, Democracy and Markets. Google Scholar

17. The A-L scale is constructed using simple additive procedures by standardizing, equally weighing, and combining the twelve items reported in Table 1, running on a ten-point scale from authoritarian to libertarian.Google Scholar

18. We created the eleven New Politics issue scales including five morality issues (abortion, euthanasia and suicide, prostitution, homosexuality, alternative family values), three human rights issues (women's rights, minority rights, nontraditional women's role), two quality of life issues (environmental, autonomous job), and one social change issue item. The correlations between our A-L values and the combined issues scale reached remarkably high levels for Japan and Taiwan (.44 and .37) and even higher for Australia and New Zealand (.52 and .50).Google Scholar

19. As established in other works, education is one of the strongest predictors of A-L values. See Inglehart, , Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society; Inglehart, and Welzel, , Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. The correlations between the A-L scale and education are .12, .28, -.02, .14, .29, and .23 for Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand, respectively.Google Scholar

20. The five-item protest potential scale includes signing a petition, joining in boycotts, attending lawful demonstrations, joining unofficial strikes, and occupying buildings or factories.Google Scholar

21. We further tested the model, this time replacing our A-L with Ingle-hart's four-item M-PM scale. Similar patterns emerge for all but Japan. In the Japanese case, the M-PM values are no longer significant in separating LDP supporters from DJP supporters. Moreover, the significance levels also changed for a distinction on values between the LDP and the no-party supporters at the .10 level and on economic policy attitudes at .05 level.Google Scholar

22. Authoritarian/libertarian values: 1—authoritarian, 10—libertarian. Economic issues: 1—economic conservative, 10—economic liberal. Trust in social and government institutions: 1—trust, 10—distrust. Left/right scale: 1—right, 10—left. Involvement: 1—least involved, 10—very involved. Protest potential: 1—no protest, 3—much protest.Google Scholar

23. Flanagan, et al., The Japanese Voter. Google Scholar

24. Hsieh, John Fuh-Sheng, “Continuity and Change in Taiwan's Electoral Politics.” In Hsieh, and Newman, , How Asia Votes, pp. 32–49.Google Scholar

25. See Dalton, and Tanaka, article, and Ian McAllister in this issue.Google Scholar

26. Rood, Steve, “Elections as Complicated and Important Events in the Philippines.” In Hsieh, and Newman, , How Asia Votes, p. 154.Google Scholar

27. Weatherbee, Donald E., “Indonesia: Electoral Politics in a Newly Emerging Democracy.” In Hsieh, and Newman, , How Asia Votes, p. 262.Google Scholar

28. Only three predictors (Old Politics issues, trust in governmental institutions, leftist ideology) are statistically significant for New Zealand: Labor Party supporters, compared with National Party supporters, are more Old Politics issue oriented, more trusting in governmental institutions, and more to the left.Google Scholar

29. Western, Mark and Tranter, Bruce, “Postmaterialist and Economic Voting in Australia, 1990–98,” Australian Journal of Political Science 36, no. 3 (2001): 439–458.Google Scholar

30. See Chu, Yun-Han, Crafting Democracy in Taiwan (Taipei: Institute for National Policy Research, 1992); similarly, Dalton and Tanaka in this issue find that national pride is the strongest correlate of left-right position in Taiwan.Google Scholar