Voting for nostalgia?: Authoritarian nostalgia, social identity, and political behavior in post-authoritarian democracies

Why do voters feel nostalgia for former dictatorships? And how does such sentiment shape voter attitudes and related behaviors? This dissertation provides an extensive investigation of authoritarian nostalgia, systemically reporting and analyzing the foundations and impacts of the sentimental longing for an authoritarian past. I introduce a dispositional framework in studying determinants of authoritarian nostalgia and identify key predispositions that exert both direct and indirect effects on this nostalgia. I further argue for a theoretical mechanism of social identity in connecting authoritarian nostalgia and political behavior. I test my arguments with a new, reliable measure for authoritarian nostalgia, drawing on original survey data from South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Empirical results corroborate the political importance of authoritarian nostalgia, which is greater than programmatic or ideological proximity. In post-authoritarian democracies, how citizens perceive the past can promote strong group sentiment and heightened attachment to political elites and parties connected to the past.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Kim, Sanghoon

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mondak, Jeffery J
• Winters, Matthew S
• Canache, Damarys J
• Ksiazkiewicz, Aleks

• authoritarian nostalgia
• authoritarian legacies
• political behavior
• political psychology
• personality traits
• survey experiment
• post-authoritarian democracies

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Sanghoon Kim

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115450

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115450