Explore Political Culture Study

In this post, I will list a set of literature I found interesting, fancy, and important in today’s political culture studies.

Acemoglu, D., Ajzenman, N., Aksoy, C. G., Fiszbein, M., & Molina, C. A. (2021). (Successful) democracies breed their own support. National Bureau of Economic Research.

Utilizing data from international value surveys and democratic datasets (e.g., Freedom House), this paper studies the impact of democracy exposure on citizens’ subjective support for democracy by comparing people from different cohorts within the same country. Results show that people living in democratic countries for a longer period hold more positive attitudes toward democracy. The result is strengthened by an instrumental variable regression (IV: Regional Democratization Wave) and analysis with a migration sample. Further analysis shows that this impact is only limited to democratic countries with positive institutional performance (economic growth, peace and political stability, and public goods).

This paper provides a brilliant example of using survey data to conduct the causal inference. Meanwhile, it highlights the impact of democratization on public opinion even though the findings are somewhat not consistent with today’s world.