Comparative evidence on cultural variability in authoritarianism: An ethical and relational perspective
| Published date | 01 February 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221119645 |
| Author | Meixi Zhuang |
| Date | 01 February 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221119645
Politics
2024, Vol. 44(1) 58 –77
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957221119645
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Comparative evidence
on cultural variability in
authoritarianism: An ethical
and relational perspective
Meixi Zhuang
Fudan University, China
Abstract
Is authoritarianism a universal psychological phenomenon? Does the concept of authoritarianism
in its current form effectively explain anti-democratic tendencies across societies? From a cultural
perspective and using data of Chinese citizens in the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey,
this article identifies an authoritarian variant of an ethical and relational origin. This article
argues that the received view of authoritarianism, which is conceptually bounded to prejudice,
represents but one brand that arises as a function of threat. In paternalistic cultures such as
Confucianism, people may develop hierarchical orientations through the learning of certain
relational ethics. Called Confucian Authoritarian Orientation (CAO), this authoritarian variant
encodes the following three attitudinal aspects: (1) authority reverence, (2) authority worship,
and (3) authority dependence. Empirical results show that CAO stands as an entirely different
construct from prejudice-bounded concepts such as Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Furthermore,
CAO also serves as a powerful predictor of political docility in individuals; it is correlated with
stronger political trust and weaker political efficacy.
Keywords
Asian Barometer Survey, authoritarianism, China, relational ethics, Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Received: 22nd February 2022; Revised version received: 28th June 2022; Accepted: 4th July 2022
Introduction
Scholars often use the standard conception of authoritarianism, or so-called authoritarian
predisposition/personality, to understand a variety of anti-democratic politics (Herzog,
2021: 2). Not many have noticed that this concept, which is conceptually bounded to
generalised prejudice, mainly applies to certain North American and European popula-
tions susceptible to the appeal of ethnocentric, proto-fascist ideology within an intergroup
hostility context. If authoritarianism in its broadest sense is about strict obedience to an
external authority at the expense of individual autonomy and freedom, then across human
Corresponding author:
Meixi Zhuang, Department of Political Science, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai 200433, China.
Email: zhuangmeixi@fudan.edu.cn
1119645POL0010.1177/02633957221119645PoliticsZhuang
research-article2022
Article
Zhuang 59
societies, there should be various processes and structures that can engender such orienta-
tions in one way or another.
This article departs from the standard view and argues that authoritarianism is an
embedded construct that signifies modes of attitudinal responses to cultural and social
environments surrounding it. Based on observation of Chinese citizens, this article identi-
fies a cultural variant called Confucian Authoritarian Orientation (CAO), which is a set of
internalised worldview beliefs of Confucian relational ethics. Explaining its social origin,
dynamic, and predictive power for political orientations, this article shows how CAO dif-
fers substantially from prejudice-bounded authoritarianism found in the West.
The rest of the article is organised as follows. It first critically reviews existing authori-
tarianism theories, against which it theorises CAO. Drawing on data from the fourth wave
of the Asian Barometer Survey, the main empirical analysis first tests the construct valid-
ity of CAO by comparing data on China and three Southeast Asian countries and then
examines CAO’s relationship with political docility at the individual level. Two robust-
ness checks using different survey data are conducted to further validate CAO.
Prejudice-bounded authoritarianism and its limits
Authoritarianism is a concept originally developed to explain the underlying personality
leading to social pathologies that form the base of prejudice and, more particularly, Nazi
fascism (Kreindler, 2005: 90). The most classical research for such answers is the authori-
tarian personality theory. From a psychiatric perspective, the theory explains how
repressed psychological needs by punitive parenting in early childhood engenders a par-
ticular personality type, with uncritical submission towards authority on one hand and
hostility projected towards the vulnerable and the weak on the other hand (Adorno et al.,
1950). The theory is operationalised as an F-scale with a constellation of nine personality
traits as designated predictors of pre-fascist attitudes. Following a series of subsequent
conceptualisations such as the Dogmatism (Rokeach, 1954) and Conservatism (Wilson,
1973), Altemeyer’s (1981) three-factor Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale
(authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism) stood out as
the most reliable measure of authoritarian personality, and its importance in explaining
individual differences in intergroup behaviour have been widely agreed (Duckitt et al.,
2010: 686).
While initially defined in terms of individual psychodynamics, the informative value
of the concept of authoritarianism is largely sociological, and is strongly oriented towards
prejudice-related attitudes and behaviours along various social/ideological and institu-
tional dimensions (Altemeyer, 1988, 1996; Duckitt, 2001; Feldman, 2003; Pratto, et al.,
1994; Stenner, 2005). Most notably, recent theories have sought to understand the under-
lying core values as well as the social and situational factors eliciting authoritarian
dynamics in ways that lead to generalised prejudice (Duckitt, 2015: 259). Along this line
of inquiry, new theories have adopted an intergroup hostility perspective and understand
authoritarianism as a group phenomenon (Stellmacher and Petzel, 2005), which may arise
from the psychological needs for group norms (Kreindler, 2005), group cohesion (Duckitt
and Sibley, 2010), social conformity (Feldman, 2003; Feldman and Stenner, 1997), and
collective security (Duckitt et al., 2010).
The above research agenda, with certain traits, attitudes, and beliefs measured depend-
ently on prejudice, makes the concept of authoritarianism largely a theoretical–relational
tautology (Liska, 1969). Different from tautology at the operational level, which confuses
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