As democracy backsliding has come to the fore in recent years, authoritarian nostalgia has also stood out as an emerging topic in democratization studies. Since nostalgia is inherently an emotion, this study differs from the existing literature that treated authoritarian nostalgia merely as a political attitude. Instead, we reinterpret authoritarian nostalgia by regarding the fundamentals of nostalgia in psychology, emphasizing three qualities of authoritarian nostalgia, which are “idealized,” “time-unrestrictive,” and “constructive.” In addition, we select two sets of national telephone surveys in 2015 and 2023 to conduct empirical analysis. First, we find that the Taiwanese public shows greater authoritarian nostalgia in social stability and economic performance than in the aspect of political and human rights. Second, the results reveal that age, political efficacy, and party identification exert an influence on authoritarian nostalgia; older people and those with low political efficacy display a tendency towards such nostalgia.

Moreover, Pan-Blue supporters are more likely to feel authoritarian nostalgia under a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, while Pan-Green supporters, by contrast, believe that the present ruling government usually outperforms its past and authoritarian counterpart, accentuating the importance of party politics in Taiwanese authoritarian nostalgia. Finally, we propose an innovative survey questionnaire to tap the concept of authoritarian nostalgia, hoping to pave the way for further research in this field.