Authoritarian Nostalgia, Group Sentiment, and Voter Behavior: Evidence from East Asia

Legacies of an authoritarian past have enduring effects on voters’ attitudes and behaviors. I argue that authoritarian nostalgia is an important source of group sentiment and voter behavior in post-authoritarian democracies. Voters with nostalgic sentiment construct strong group sentiment based on historical perception and express attachment towards authoritarian successors. I test this argument with a new measure of authoritarian nostalgia. With original data collected from South Korea and Taiwan, I provide evidence that nostalgic voters are likely to exhibit strong group sentiment observable through partisan attachment. Abstracting from the specific cases, I use a randomly assigned candidate comparison analysis to demonstrate that voters high in authoritarian nostalgia are more attracted to hypothetical candidates invoking nostalgia than those with high programmatic or ideological proximity. Overall, the results show how authoritarian nostalgia remains important as a source of group sentiment in maturing democracies.