Suchergebnisse

Political tolerance, which is the willingness to extend civil liberties, is a core principle in a democracy. In the study of tolerance, scholars use some variation of the tolerance scale, which gives us individual and aggregated willingness to extend civil liberties, such as free speech to disliked groups. There are potential issues with the way tolerance is measured, particularly with regard to different social groups. Through a series of experimental studies using student and internet samples, I examine whether political tolerance is susceptible to social concerns. Given that the measure of tolerance may be susceptible to social concerns, estimates of political tolerance may not fully capture actual tolerance.

Authoritarian governments heavily rely on propaganda as a means of maintaining rule. Although scholars have examined the effects of propaganda exposure, much less is known about attitudes toward propaganda messages. In this study, we explore the foundations underlying propaganda support in China by examining the role of political trust, a primary ingredient for explaining public support for government actions and compliance. Using a survey with a broad sample of Chinese internet users and taking measures to address endogeneity, we found that trust in government, whether measured indirectly (implicitly) or directly (explicitly), is a vital source of positive attitudes toward propaganda and hence its potential effects. Our results have important implications for understanding the foundations of propaganda support, the scope of political trust, and the value of indirect measures for gauging public opinion in authoritarian contexts. They also suggest that propaganda may lose its bite under certain conditions.

High levels of self-reported trust in government found in China has invited skepticism about the authenticity of survey results. To address this question, we examine implicit political trust, an automatic, intuitive orientation toward government. Using the Single-Target Implicit Association Test, we found that the Chinese public holds an implicit trust in government that is unrelated to self-reported, explicit trust. Whereas early political socialization processes, represented by education and urban residency, increase implicit trust they also decrease explicit trust suggesting that agents of socialization have differential effects. Furthermore, performance evaluations, income, and social desirability affect explicit trust but have no effect on implicit trust. Controlling for explicit trust, we found that implicit trust matters for understanding various types of regime support including system justification, the social credit system, and government's ability to handle crises. Our results have important implications for understanding regime support in the world's largest authoritarian country.