Congruence and Variation in Sources of Regime Support in Asia

• Main Authors: CHU, Yun-Han, WELSH, Bridget, CHANG, Alex
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2012
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1303
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The question of regime legitimacy or the “right to rule” has fascinated political scientists since Aristotle, as the discipline has long debated the extent to which citizens in different countries support different types of regimes and why. Over the last few decades a plethora of research has not only explored the level of citizen support for democracy and authoritarian regimes, it has offered reasons why. From analyses of critical citizens and political culture to governance and nationalism, we now have a series of alternatives to weigh in assessing the underlying factors of regime support. Implicit in this discussion of regime support has been the closely related issue of regime resilience, whether democratic and authoritarians regimes persist and why. Here explanations range from issues of income levels and economic conditions to electoral competition. Most of the work has centered on understanding democratic regimes, although increasingly studies have looked at more authoritarian systems across regime types.