Macro-Political Origins of Micro-Political Differences: A Comparison of Eleven Societies in East and South Asia

Abstract

This article examines the cross-level causal relationship between macro-political settings and micro-political attitudes in eleven Asian societies using the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey (China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan) and the 2006 South Asian Survey (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). After extracting the four underlying dimensions of political attitudes from the broadly comparable questions used in the two surveys, the study first detects national differences in terms of (1) citizens' attitudes toward political activities other than voting, (2) their commitment to a democratic system, (3) their political frustration, and (4) their confidence in their ability to govern themselves. Then, regression analysis examines the possibility that the micro-level variations in each of the four dimensions of political attitudes are related to the abundant macro-level variations found in these Asian countries. The results show that although the country-level predictors for citizens' attitudes toward direct political actions are common to both regions (ethno-linguistic fractionalization and the degree of institutionalization of preference articulation), factors influencing the variations in other dimensions are different. Specifically, the effects of political competitiveness and inclusiveness are more salient in South Asia than in East Asia.