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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 Authoritarian Nostalgia in Taiwan: Public Evaluations of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Administration in Comparative Perspective

Authoritarian Nostalgia in Taiwan: Public Evaluations of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Administration in Comparative Perspective

Chung-Li Wu
2008 / 11
Volume 15, No.2

pp.119-142
10.6612/tjes.2008.15.02.119-142
Paper

Abstract

In the case of some transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, it is prevalent to have the sentiment of nostalgia for the stable and orderly times of the past regime, particularly in the context of nascent democracies. This pilot study sheds some light on the issue by examining the public evaluations of government performance between the Chiang Ching-kuo administration and the present government in Taiwan. I take advantage of the ”2003 Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study” (TEDS 2003) survey date, using the technique of factor analysis to classify government-performance evaluations into two factors, ”liberty and democracy” and ”stabilization and income equality,” and then employing regression models to test the relationship between sociopolitical variables and the two factors. The findings confirm the research hypothesis of authoritarian nostalgia that the public perceptions of the Chiang Ching-kuo administration and the present government differ in terms of the political perspective and the socioeconomic standpoint. On one hand, the general public has perceived the achievement of ”liberty and democracy” since the democratic transition, and on the other has looked back with nostalgia to the impressions of ”stabilization and income equality” during the authoritarian period. The findings also reveal that the variables of educational attainment, political knowledge, Taiwanese consciousness, Taiwan independence preference, and the pan-green identification exert positive effects on ”liberty and democracy,” while the variables of mainlander ethnicity, Chinese consciousness, China reunification preference, and the pan-blue identification account for significant variance in ”stabilization and income equality.” This study concludes that authoritarian nostalgia is still potential for future research in this field of democratization.

Keywords

authoritarian nostalgia

government performance

democratic transition

economic performance

the Chiang Ching-kuo administration