Looking forward and looking backward: Economic evaluations and regime support in China
| Author | Yida Zhai |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0263395721989545 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395721989545
Politics
2023, Vol. 43(1) 18 –37
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395721989545
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Looking forward and
looking backward:
Economic evaluations and
regime support in China
Yida Zhai
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R. China
Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that the economic situation is of vital importance for the stability of
an authoritarian regime, but it is rarely known how the public’s economic evaluation contributes
to such outcomes. This study examines the effects of citizens’ retrospective and prospective
evaluations of their household economic situation and the national economy on the level of
regime support in China. The findings show that the national economy outweighs household
economic conditions in its effects on the public’s support of the regime. However, the gap
between evaluations of the national economy and individual economic situations debilitates regime
support. The population in different age cohorts has distinct patterns of relationships between
retrospective and prospective economic evaluations and regime support. This study elucidates the
political-psychological mechanism of the public’s economic evaluation affecting regime support,
and the ruling strategy in authoritarian regimes of manipulating this evaluation.
Keywords
authoritarian regimes, economic performance, political trust, regime support, retrospective and
prospective evaluation
Received: 20th March 2020; Revised version received: 13th September 2020; Accepted: 13th November
2020
Introduction
Autocrats can stay in power through ruthless oppression and violence against dissidents
over a short period, but it is easier to maintain a dictatorship if they can obtain the public’s
voluntary support. Indeed, autocrats are aware of the low efficiency of political oppres-
sion in regime maintenance in the long term and seek to obtain popularity through alter-
native means (Pye and Pye, 1985). Provision of economic welfare and improvement in
citizens’ living standards are useful in generating popular support (Lewis-Beck et al.,
Corresponding author:
Yida Zhai, School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 1954 Huashan Road,
Shanghai 200030, P.R. China.
Email: yidazhai@yahoo.com
989545POL0010.1177/0263395721989545PoliticsZhai
research-article2021
Article
Zhai 19
2014; Tang, 2005, 2016; Zhai, 2016). Studying the public’s economic evaluation in
authoritarian regimes is crucial, as it can delineate the configuration of the opposition to
and support for the regime.
In democracies, the government’s economic performance is equally critical and sig-
nificantly affects politicians’ approval ratings as well as electoral politics (Cohen, 2004;
Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2007; Zhai, 2020). Nevertheless, authoritarian regimes are in
greater need of economic performance than their democratic counterparts (Huhe and
Tang, 2017; Ou-Yang and Zhou, 2019). Regardless of the discontentment, low level of
trust in the government, or the protesting of citizens in established democracies, they are
unwilling to abandon their fundamental democratic institutions for non-democratic sys-
tems merely because of an unsatisfactory economy (Gherghina and Klymenko, 2012;
Mishler and Rose, 1996). Elections provide a channel to replace incompetent administra-
tions and maintain the resilience of democratic institutions. However, authoritarian
regimes have limited available manoeuvres to obtain popular support, barring better eco-
nomic performances. Satisfactory economic performances lead ordinary people, who
obtain a tangible benefit, to believe in the ‘effectiveness’ of their current authoritarian
regime. Although such a regime may not necessarily be perceived as legitimate, the
masses do not have sufficient incentives to overthrow it and, minimally, it seems tolerable
to live in such an authoritarian regime in return for material benefits and stability (Chang
et al., 2013; Makarkin and Oppenheimer, 2011; Tang, 2016; Zhai, 2016). A tangible
improvement in ordinary people’s socioeconomic welfare that somewhat ‘proves’ the
regime’s advantage in delivering pragmatic outcomes is critical to the maintenance of
authoritarian regimes.
Economic performance is of particular relevance to authoritarian regimes because sat-
isfactory economic outcomes give the regime room to manoeuvre in immediate difficulties
and keep them resilient under the pressure of political reform (Nathan, 2003). Political
leaders in Kazakhstan, Russia, Venezuela, Vietnam, and other authoritarian countries uni-
versally prioritize economic development as a national strategy (Ou-Yang and Zhou, 2019;
Rose et al., 2011; Treisman, 2011; Weyland, 2003). As an authoritarian nation with the
world’s largest population, China’s politics provide a case for studying the maintenance of
public support by authoritarian regimes through their economic performance. Admittedly,
political socialization, Confucian values, nationalism, and control of the media are also
important in maintaining popular support for the political system in China (Chen, 2017; Lu
and Shi, 2015; Zhai, 2017, 2018), but the majority of studies carried out to date primarily
attribute the resilience of the Chinese authoritarian regime to its remarkable economic
growth in the wake of third-wave democratization (Chen, 2004; Li, 2016; Tang, 2005;
Zhai, 2016). Ordinary people gain considerable economic benefits from the current regime,
which undermines the attractiveness of alternative political systems. The masses have suf-
ficient reasons to accept the existing political status if they continue to benefit from it, and
avoid any institutional transition that may cause the loss of their interests. On the contrary,
if autocrats cannot achieve such minimum requirement, the regime will be at a high risk of
breakdown (Tang, 2016; Zhai, 2019, 2020). Given that economic success is the major
source of public support for the current political system, this study, while not denying the
importance of other factors, will examine the effects of economic performance.
Focusing on the impact of economic conditions on regime support enables us to exam-
ine how citizens’ economic evaluation affects their support for a political system. Although
a link between the economic situation and governmental approval has been widely real-
ized, little is known about the psychological mechanism by which the economic situation
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