Yao-Yuan Yeh
Biographic Data
| ID | 224197 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Yao-Yuan Yeh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Yao-Yuan |
| FAMILY NAME | Yeh |
| SIGNATURE | YEH Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of St. Thomas - Texas |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9160-1239 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Crying wolf? Threat perception, and public willingness for self-defense
Most citizens in Taiwan are aware of the growing threat of a Chinese invasion, but does a “war on the horizon” motivate them to be more supportive of self-defense? Psychological research suggests that the perceived urgency of a crisis often influences attitudes and behavior. Building on this literature, we formulate three hypotheses related to the Taiwan case. Using data from eight waves of nationally representative surveys conducted by the Insti…
Life‐Cycle and Generational Influences on Chinese Political Behavior and Attitudes: Age Matters, and so Does Context
Objective This article aims to revisit the relative importance of age versus generation in explaining differences of political behavior and attitudes across age cohorts in China, assess the impact of contextual changes affecting multiple age groups, and identify special characteristics of attitudes and behavior of Generation Z. Method Analysis of differences among age cohorts using survey data for 2019 and differences for each cohort between 2008…
Media sources, partisanship, and public support for self-defense in Taiwan
In this study, the authors focus on Taiwan, where citizens are increasingly concerned about the possibility of a Chinese invasion. Specifically, the authors want to know if different media sources would influence citizens’ willingness to engage in self-defense. Additionally, they would like to see if partisans experience a backfire effect when exposed to incongruent political information. To test these hypotheses, they designed and conducted an o…
The Ripple Effect: How the Russo–Ukrainian War Shaped Public Perception of Presidential Performance in Taiwan
This study investigates the impact of the 2022 Russo–Ukrainian War on public evaluations of presidential performance in Taiwan. It argues that an international crisis, when perceived as a plausible threat to individuals’ immediate environment and linked to past events with tangible physical or financial consequences, can trigger a rally-around-the-flag effect, leading to increased public support for the incumbent president. Utilising a quasi-expe…
Did Vice-Presidential Candidates Decide the 2024 Presidential Election in Taiwan
The literature on elections and voting in the United States demonstrates that vice-presidential (VP) candidates, or “running mates,” can have a significant electoral impact. However, this three-part analytical framework has not been extended to other presidential democracies to explore whether and how VP candidates’ influence may vary elsewhere. We do so in this paper by analyzing their impact on Taiwan’s 2024 presidential election. Our analysis …
Dying to Win? Casualty Sensitivity, Partnership, and Willingness for Self-Defense in Taiwan
Casualty is one of the most important factors influencing public support for war in the existing literature. In this paper, we use a hypothetical conflict across the Taiwan Strait to ask the following: (1) Are Taiwanese citizens sensitive to increasing battle deaths? (2) Are they more sensitive to civilian deaths as opposed to military ones? (3) Does partisanship shape how citizens respond to casualty information? We fielded an experiment in Taiw…
Media literacy and partisan convergence across social network sites
The existing literature highlights social network sites (SNS) as important channels for consuming news and receiving misinformation. However, people surf multiple SNS daily, such as Facebook, Twitter, Line, etc. People also connect and interact with each other, given the characteristics of specific SNS. Driven by partisan bias, partisan supporters may be driven to converge on a specific SNS due to a political echo chamber that exists there. In su…
Why Does Taiwan Identity Decline
Since 1992, the percentage of Taiwanese identifying as 'Taiwanese only' increased by 50%. The literature explains the increase by generation, democratization, and military threat. None of these foresees the decline of Taiwan identity between 2016 and 2018. We argue that the decline can be explained by issue ownership + hedging. After the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) won both the presidency and the Congress for the first time in 2016, DPP's per…
Strategic Ambiguity, Strategic Clarity, and Dual Clarity
The United States has successfully prevented the military conflict between China and Taiwan since the 1980s through the Strategic Ambiguity (SA) strategy, which discourages both sides from deviating from the status quo by not committing to defend or not to defend Taiwan. The recent US–China tensions and the rising nationalism in China and Taiwan drew critics to SA and suggested it be replaced with the strategic clarity strategy. We argue that the…
Gender-inequitable discrimination? A survey experiment on the gendered implications of unauthorized immigrant narratives
The existing framing and narrative studies focus on the influence of framing and narratives targeting one population as a whole but neglect how these can affect the subgroups of the target population differently. Using a survey experiment, this research investigates whether and how implicitly gendered narrative cues affect public acceptance of male or female unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle. Based on the experimental …
Monolithic Chinese political culture: A cross‐regional exploration
Objective This article explores whether authoritarian China has a monolithic political culture, or rather a set of somewhat different political cultures across a number of regions. Method On the basis of several criteria we deem particularly important for identifying regions within which development, communication, and socialization of political attitudes are likely to be internally common but distinguishable from those of other regions, we divid…
Taiwanese Support for Self-Defense after the Russo–Ukrainian War
What impact does the Russo–Ukrainian War have on Taiwanese citizens’ attitudes toward the country’s self-defense? We used seven waves of representative surveys by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research between September 2021 and March 2023 (n = 10,869) in Taiwan. We tested two major hypotheses: that support for self-defense should increase for all citizens after the Ukraine crisis; and that the effect should be visible only amon…
Undercurrent in Taiwan: Nationalism and Calculation of the Cross-Strait Relations (2002–2022)
The literature highlights the conflicting trends between rising nationalism and stable preferences for status quo on cross-strait relations in Taiwan. This article provides new insights from the Taiwan National Security Survey (2002–2022, 14 waves, n = 16, 494) to help explain this apparent inconsistency. The surveys employed “conditional preference” items to capture how the cross-strait attitudes of Taiwanese people are shaped. Since 2002, Taiwa…
Public support for the use of force in non-Western and non-major powers: The case of a China–Taiwan war
Studies of public support for war among non-Western and non-major powers (NWNM) states are distinctive from United States foreign military operations. First, these wars often intrude on subjects’ direct livelihood. Second, great powers’ intervention can drastically alter the outcome of these wars. These factors have not been examined extensively in the war support literature. We fill this gap by spearheading several hypotheses of war support uniq…
Judicial reasoning, individual cultural types, and support for Covid-19 vaccine mandates
With heated political and public debate over government vaccine mandates, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to better understand the role of policy justifications on people's perceptions towards a policy. Through this study, we aim to move beyond the partisan and ideological arguments for and against vaccine mandates to illustrate how individuals' worldviews, based on Cultural Theory, can better explain why people have different perceptions towards …
Investing in Women’s Educational Outcomes: An Examination of Educational Enrollment and Terrorism in Africa
This research examines the nexus between educational opportunities and incidences of domestic terrorism. Focusing on 50 African countries over the period 1970–2018, this article provides several novel contributions to the discourse. First, the article finds that differences in educational enrollment between women and men is likely to exacerbate domestic terrorism. This outcome is especially dire for women than that anticipated by well-meaning pol…
The Multiverse of Taiwan’s Future: Reconsidering the Independence–Unification ( Tondu ) Attitudes
For decades, scholars have constructed various ways to measure Taiwanese public opinion on the nation’s future, the independence–unification ( Tondu) question. While existing surveys find that Taiwanese people become more likely to support independence, the majority still favors the “status quo” option. Existing measurements have a number of weaknesses. For instance, most do not inform citizens what the “status quo” means, nor do they specify whe…
High-level visit and national security policy: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Taiwan
Great powers often use high-level visits to reassure weaker states. The literature on public diplomacy shows that these visits can bring a number of advantages while overlooking their potential impact on increasing support for the great power’s security agenda and confidence in the host country’s defense policy and military. This note employed a quasi-experiment in Taiwan, in which three high-profile US Senators visited Taiwan unexpectedly during…
Understanding Chinese nationalism: Does location matter
Objective The purpose of this research is to explore whether the location of a citizen's residence is an important source of explanation for nationalistic attitudes in China. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults and a multidimensional approach to nationalism, analyses include bivariate correlation and multiple regression. Results Significant support is found for 12 of 16 hypotheses linking “location variabl…
Willingness to Defend Own Country in the Baltic States: Implications for National Security and Nato’s Collective Defence
The publication reflects on one of the core aspects and indicators of societal resilience and national defence – why ordinary people are or are not willing to defend their own countries. Based on a review of conceptual considerations and statistical data, an international team of scientists have explored the situation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and its implications to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
China’s soft power and US public opinion
In recent years, China has been using its soft power (most notably, the establishment of Confucius Institutes) to influence public opinion in foreign countries. However, the literature on soft power has yet to provide a definitive answer about whether that has led to a positive image of China in the foreign audience. Additionally, it is not clear if a positive image would influence public attitudes concerning foreign policies in those countries, …
Identifying and Understanding Distinctive Political Attitudes of Chinese Migrant Workers: A Research Note
Objective The objectives are to (1) determine the extent to which problem priorities of migrant workers differ from attitudes of both nonmigrating rural peasants and urban workers and (2) attempt to explain those differences as resulting from either relative deprivation or relative awareness. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults, analyses include both cross‐tabulation and multiple regression. Results Rural …
The non‐consensus 1992 consensus
The 1992 Consensus is perhaps the most crucial political term for cross‐strait relations. Surveys show that the public consistently supports it in Taiwan. Despite the alleged broad support, there has not been an academic study examining if Taiwanese people understand the content of the 1992 Consensus. Such an inquiry is important as the administration in Taiwan has yet accepted the Consensus in its interactions with Beijing. A nearly representati…
Perceived cadre corruption and government responsibility in China: Does the blame stay local, and why (not)
Using data from a 2008 nationwide survey in China, this study explores the relationship of perceived local-level corruption to government trust in an established authoritarian regime. With nearly two thirds of respondents considering cadre corruption to be a ‘serious problem,’ the authors find that perceptions of serious corruption are significantly and negatively related to trust in officials at all levels of government, including the central le…
Does Education Mitigate Terrorism? Examining the Effects of Educated Youth Cohorts on Domestic Terror in Africa
Policymakers often tout expanded access to education as an antidote for terrorism in Africa. Targeted economic development is also considered a necessary complement to education gains because young, well-educated individuals who lack viable opportunities are vulnerable targets of radicalization. Despite common assertions that poor socioeconomic circumstances drive radicalization, empirical research has hitherto neglected critical inquiry of these…
Information from Abroad: Foreign Media, Selective Exposure and Political Support in China
What kind of content do citizens in a developing and authoritarian country like to acquire from Western free media? What are the effects of their potentially selective exposure? In a survey experiment involving 1,200 Chinese internet users from diverse socio-demographic backgrounds, this study finds that Chinese citizens with higher pro-Western orientations and lower regime evaluations are more inclined to read content that is positive about fore…
Public support for the use of force in non-Western and non-major powers: The case of a China–Taiwan war
Studies of public support for war among non-Western and non-major powers (NWNM) states are distinctive from United States foreign military operations. First, these wars often intrude on subjects’ direct livelihood. Second, great powers’ intervention can drastically alter the outcome of these wars. These factors have not been examined extensively in the war support literature. We fill this gap by spearheading several hypotheses of war support uniq…
High-level visit and national security policy: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Taiwan
Great powers often use high-level visits to reassure weaker states. The literature on public diplomacy shows that these visits can bring a number of advantages while overlooking their potential impact on increasing support for the great power’s security agenda and confidence in the host country’s defense policy and military. This note employed a quasi-experiment in Taiwan, in which three high-profile US Senators visited Taiwan unexpectedly during…
Diversionary Behavior for Weak States: A Case Study of Taiwan
This paper explores the mechanisms and circumstances under which leaders in weak states adopt diversionary behavior to deal with domestic problems. We examine the case of Taiwan to see if its President, Tsai Ingwen, has adopted diversionary behavior from 2016 to the present. We found that, unlike great powers, weak-state leaders often resort to non-force tactics such as blaming foreign opponents, but the emergence of diversionary behavior is cond…
When war hits home: Taiwanese public support for war of necessity
When a war directly intrudes citizens’ living space, it becomes a war of necessity for the public to defend themselves. However, current literature on public support for war has focused exclusively on wars of choice, not of necessity. Thus, we wonder if existing indicators of war support have explanatory power in this context. In this article, we examine existing indicators in a war of necessity—a cross-Strait conflict between Taiwan and China—to…
China's Age Cohorts: Differences in Political Attitudes and Behavior
Objective The main objective of this article is to explore whether age seems to affect political attitudes and behavior in authoritarian China and, if so, whether “generation” seems to matter, in addition to “age” itself, in driving differences among age cohorts. Methods The primary analytical method of identifying “perturbations” (Watts, 1999) focuses on determining deviations from what are considered to be established Western democratic “baseli…
Why Does Taiwan Identity Decline
Since 1992, the percentage of Taiwanese identifying as 'Taiwanese only' increased by 50%. The literature explains the increase by generation, democratization, and military threat. None of these foresees the decline of Taiwan identity between 2016 and 2018. We argue that the decline can be explained by issue ownership + hedging. After the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) won both the presidency and the Congress for the first time in 2016, DPP's per…
Strategic Ambiguity, Strategic Clarity, and Dual Clarity
The United States has successfully prevented the military conflict between China and Taiwan since the 1980s through the Strategic Ambiguity (SA) strategy, which discourages both sides from deviating from the status quo by not committing to defend or not to defend Taiwan. The recent US–China tensions and the rising nationalism in China and Taiwan drew critics to SA and suggested it be replaced with the strategic clarity strategy. We argue that the…
The non‐consensus 1992 consensus
The 1992 Consensus is perhaps the most crucial political term for cross‐strait relations. Surveys show that the public consistently supports it in Taiwan. Despite the alleged broad support, there has not been an academic study examining if Taiwanese people understand the content of the 1992 Consensus. Such an inquiry is important as the administration in Taiwan has yet accepted the Consensus in its interactions with Beijing. A nearly representati…
Determinants of Domestic Terrorism: An Examination of Ethnic Polarization and Economic Development
Many scholars have sought to explain why countries with ethnically heterogeneous populations experience higher levels of political violence, but these studies have produced mixed findings. Unlike most studies that use ethno-linguistic fractionalization indices to examine this relationship, we argue that ethnic polarization is a more appropriate measure to assess the role of ethnicity as a causal factor of domestic terrorism. This paper hypothesiz…
Understanding Chinese nationalism: Does location matter
Objective The purpose of this research is to explore whether the location of a citizen's residence is an important source of explanation for nationalistic attitudes in China. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults and a multidimensional approach to nationalism, analyses include bivariate correlation and multiple regression. Results Significant support is found for 12 of 16 hypotheses linking “location variabl…
Age Versus Socialization in Understanding Attitudes Toward Economic Reforms in China
Objective The objective of this research is to address the roles of age and socialization in explanation for attitudes toward economic reforms in China. Method Using data from the China Survey 2008 and the China Governance and Policy Survey of 2016, this note reports age/cohort‐related differences in both abstract and concrete attitudes toward economic reforms, and addresses two competing (or complementary) explanations for those differences, one…
Media literacy and partisan convergence across social network sites
The existing literature highlights social network sites (SNS) as important channels for consuming news and receiving misinformation. However, people surf multiple SNS daily, such as Facebook, Twitter, Line, etc. People also connect and interact with each other, given the characteristics of specific SNS. Driven by partisan bias, partisan supporters may be driven to converge on a specific SNS due to a political echo chamber that exists there. In su…
Monolithic Chinese political culture: A cross‐regional exploration
Objective This article explores whether authoritarian China has a monolithic political culture, or rather a set of somewhat different political cultures across a number of regions. Method On the basis of several criteria we deem particularly important for identifying regions within which development, communication, and socialization of political attitudes are likely to be internally common but distinguishable from those of other regions, we divid…
Undercurrent in Taiwan: Nationalism and Calculation of the Cross-Strait Relations (2002–2022)
The literature highlights the conflicting trends between rising nationalism and stable preferences for status quo on cross-strait relations in Taiwan. This article provides new insights from the Taiwan National Security Survey (2002–2022, 14 waves, n = 16, 494) to help explain this apparent inconsistency. The surveys employed “conditional preference” items to capture how the cross-strait attitudes of Taiwanese people are shaped. Since 2002, Taiwa…
Judicial reasoning, individual cultural types, and support for Covid-19 vaccine mandates
With heated political and public debate over government vaccine mandates, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to better understand the role of policy justifications on people's perceptions towards a policy. Through this study, we aim to move beyond the partisan and ideological arguments for and against vaccine mandates to illustrate how individuals' worldviews, based on Cultural Theory, can better explain why people have different perceptions towards …
The Multiverse of Taiwan’s Future: Reconsidering the Independence–Unification ( Tondu ) Attitudes
For decades, scholars have constructed various ways to measure Taiwanese public opinion on the nation’s future, the independence–unification ( Tondu) question. While existing surveys find that Taiwanese people become more likely to support independence, the majority still favors the “status quo” option. Existing measurements have a number of weaknesses. For instance, most do not inform citizens what the “status quo” means, nor do they specify whe…
China’s soft power and US public opinion
In recent years, China has been using its soft power (most notably, the establishment of Confucius Institutes) to influence public opinion in foreign countries. However, the literature on soft power has yet to provide a definitive answer about whether that has led to a positive image of China in the foreign audience. Additionally, it is not clear if a positive image would influence public attitudes concerning foreign policies in those countries, …
Identifying and Understanding Distinctive Political Attitudes of Chinese Migrant Workers: A Research Note
Objective The objectives are to (1) determine the extent to which problem priorities of migrant workers differ from attitudes of both nonmigrating rural peasants and urban workers and (2) attempt to explain those differences as resulting from either relative deprivation or relative awareness. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults, analyses include both cross‐tabulation and multiple regression. Results Rural …
Perceived cadre corruption and government responsibility in China: Does the blame stay local, and why (not)
Using data from a 2008 nationwide survey in China, this study explores the relationship of perceived local-level corruption to government trust in an established authoritarian regime. With nearly two thirds of respondents considering cadre corruption to be a ‘serious problem,’ the authors find that perceptions of serious corruption are significantly and negatively related to trust in officials at all levels of government, including the central le…
Does Education Mitigate Terrorism? Examining the Effects of Educated Youth Cohorts on Domestic Terror in Africa
Policymakers often tout expanded access to education as an antidote for terrorism in Africa. Targeted economic development is also considered a necessary complement to education gains because young, well-educated individuals who lack viable opportunities are vulnerable targets of radicalization. Despite common assertions that poor socioeconomic circumstances drive radicalization, empirical research has hitherto neglected critical inquiry of these…
Impacts of Internet on Openness to Change in China: Millennials Versus Pre‐Millennials
Objective This article explores whether there are different consequences from Internet use—in the form of changed political attitudes—for older Chinese as compared to their younger counterparts. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults, analyses include both cross‐tabulation and multiple regression. Results It is found that millennials are more open to political change than are older Chinese, that older Interne…
China's Age Cohorts: Differences in Political Attitudes and Behavior
Objective The main objective of this article is to explore whether age seems to affect political attitudes and behavior in authoritarian China and, if so, whether “generation” seems to matter, in addition to “age” itself, in driving differences among age cohorts. Methods The primary analytical method of identifying “perturbations” (Watts, 1999) focuses on determining deviations from what are considered to be established Western democratic “baseli…
When war hits home: Taiwanese public support for war of necessity
When a war directly intrudes citizens’ living space, it becomes a war of necessity for the public to defend themselves. However, current literature on public support for war has focused exclusively on wars of choice, not of necessity. Thus, we wonder if existing indicators of war support have explanatory power in this context. In this article, we examine existing indicators in a war of necessity—a cross-Strait conflict between Taiwan and China—to…
Age Versus Socialization in Understanding Attitudes Toward Economic Reforms in China
Objective The objective of this research is to address the roles of age and socialization in explanation for attitudes toward economic reforms in China. Method Using data from the China Survey 2008 and the China Governance and Policy Survey of 2016, this note reports age/cohort‐related differences in both abstract and concrete attitudes toward economic reforms, and addresses two competing (or complementary) explanations for those differences, one…
Impacts of Internet on Openness to Change in China: Millennials Versus Pre‐Millennials
Objective This article explores whether there are different consequences from Internet use—in the form of changed political attitudes—for older Chinese as compared to their younger counterparts. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults, analyses include both cross‐tabulation and multiple regression. Results It is found that millennials are more open to political change than are older Chinese, that older Interne…
Information from Abroad: Foreign Media, Selective Exposure and Political Support in China
What kind of content do citizens in a developing and authoritarian country like to acquire from Western free media? What are the effects of their potentially selective exposure? In a survey experiment involving 1,200 Chinese internet users from diverse socio-demographic backgrounds, this study finds that Chinese citizens with higher pro-Western orientations and lower regime evaluations are more inclined to read content that is positive about fore…
Determinants of Domestic Terrorism: An Examination of Ethnic Polarization and Economic Development
Many scholars have sought to explain why countries with ethnically heterogeneous populations experience higher levels of political violence, but these studies have produced mixed findings. Unlike most studies that use ethno-linguistic fractionalization indices to examine this relationship, we argue that ethnic polarization is a more appropriate measure to assess the role of ethnicity as a causal factor of domestic terrorism. This paper hypothesiz…
Perceived cadre corruption and government responsibility in China: Does the blame stay local, and why (not)
Using data from a 2008 nationwide survey in China, this study explores the relationship of perceived local-level corruption to government trust in an established authoritarian regime. With nearly two thirds of respondents considering cadre corruption to be a ‘serious problem,’ the authors find that perceptions of serious corruption are significantly and negatively related to trust in officials at all levels of government, including the central le…
Does Education Mitigate Terrorism? Examining the Effects of Educated Youth Cohorts on Domestic Terror in Africa
Policymakers often tout expanded access to education as an antidote for terrorism in Africa. Targeted economic development is also considered a necessary complement to education gains because young, well-educated individuals who lack viable opportunities are vulnerable targets of radicalization. Despite common assertions that poor socioeconomic circumstances drive radicalization, empirical research has hitherto neglected critical inquiry of these…
Diversionary Behavior for Weak States: A Case Study of Taiwan
This paper explores the mechanisms and circumstances under which leaders in weak states adopt diversionary behavior to deal with domestic problems. We examine the case of Taiwan to see if its President, Tsai Ingwen, has adopted diversionary behavior from 2016 to the present. We found that, unlike great powers, weak-state leaders often resort to non-force tactics such as blaming foreign opponents, but the emergence of diversionary behavior is cond…
Willingness to Defend Own Country in the Baltic States: Implications for National Security and Nato’s Collective Defence
The publication reflects on one of the core aspects and indicators of societal resilience and national defence – why ordinary people are or are not willing to defend their own countries. Based on a review of conceptual considerations and statistical data, an international team of scientists have explored the situation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and its implications to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
China’s soft power and US public opinion
In recent years, China has been using its soft power (most notably, the establishment of Confucius Institutes) to influence public opinion in foreign countries. However, the literature on soft power has yet to provide a definitive answer about whether that has led to a positive image of China in the foreign audience. Additionally, it is not clear if a positive image would influence public attitudes concerning foreign policies in those countries, …
Identifying and Understanding Distinctive Political Attitudes of Chinese Migrant Workers: A Research Note
Objective The objectives are to (1) determine the extent to which problem priorities of migrant workers differ from attitudes of both nonmigrating rural peasants and urban workers and (2) attempt to explain those differences as resulting from either relative deprivation or relative awareness. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults, analyses include both cross‐tabulation and multiple regression. Results Rural …
The non‐consensus 1992 consensus
The 1992 Consensus is perhaps the most crucial political term for cross‐strait relations. Surveys show that the public consistently supports it in Taiwan. Despite the alleged broad support, there has not been an academic study examining if Taiwanese people understand the content of the 1992 Consensus. Such an inquiry is important as the administration in Taiwan has yet accepted the Consensus in its interactions with Beijing. A nearly representati…
Understanding Chinese nationalism: Does location matter
Objective The purpose of this research is to explore whether the location of a citizen's residence is an important source of explanation for nationalistic attitudes in China. Methods Using data from a nationwide representative survey of Chinese adults and a multidimensional approach to nationalism, analyses include bivariate correlation and multiple regression. Results Significant support is found for 12 of 16 hypotheses linking “location variabl…
Investing in Women’s Educational Outcomes: An Examination of Educational Enrollment and Terrorism in Africa
This research examines the nexus between educational opportunities and incidences of domestic terrorism. Focusing on 50 African countries over the period 1970–2018, this article provides several novel contributions to the discourse. First, the article finds that differences in educational enrollment between women and men is likely to exacerbate domestic terrorism. This outcome is especially dire for women than that anticipated by well-meaning pol…
The Multiverse of Taiwan’s Future: Reconsidering the Independence–Unification ( Tondu ) Attitudes
For decades, scholars have constructed various ways to measure Taiwanese public opinion on the nation’s future, the independence–unification ( Tondu) question. While existing surveys find that Taiwanese people become more likely to support independence, the majority still favors the “status quo” option. Existing measurements have a number of weaknesses. For instance, most do not inform citizens what the “status quo” means, nor do they specify whe…
High-level visit and national security policy: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Taiwan
Great powers often use high-level visits to reassure weaker states. The literature on public diplomacy shows that these visits can bring a number of advantages while overlooking their potential impact on increasing support for the great power’s security agenda and confidence in the host country’s defense policy and military. This note employed a quasi-experiment in Taiwan, in which three high-profile US Senators visited Taiwan unexpectedly during…
Strategic Ambiguity, Strategic Clarity, and Dual Clarity
The United States has successfully prevented the military conflict between China and Taiwan since the 1980s through the Strategic Ambiguity (SA) strategy, which discourages both sides from deviating from the status quo by not committing to defend or not to defend Taiwan. The recent US–China tensions and the rising nationalism in China and Taiwan drew critics to SA and suggested it be replaced with the strategic clarity strategy. We argue that the…
Gender-inequitable discrimination? A survey experiment on the gendered implications of unauthorized immigrant narratives
The existing framing and narrative studies focus on the influence of framing and narratives targeting one population as a whole but neglect how these can affect the subgroups of the target population differently. Using a survey experiment, this research investigates whether and how implicitly gendered narrative cues affect public acceptance of male or female unauthorized immigrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle. Based on the experimental …
Monolithic Chinese political culture: A cross‐regional exploration
Objective This article explores whether authoritarian China has a monolithic political culture, or rather a set of somewhat different political cultures across a number of regions. Method On the basis of several criteria we deem particularly important for identifying regions within which development, communication, and socialization of political attitudes are likely to be internally common but distinguishable from those of other regions, we divid…
Taiwanese Support for Self-Defense after the Russo–Ukrainian War
What impact does the Russo–Ukrainian War have on Taiwanese citizens’ attitudes toward the country’s self-defense? We used seven waves of representative surveys by the Institute for National Defense and Security Research between September 2021 and March 2023 (n = 10,869) in Taiwan. We tested two major hypotheses: that support for self-defense should increase for all citizens after the Ukraine crisis; and that the effect should be visible only amon…
Undercurrent in Taiwan: Nationalism and Calculation of the Cross-Strait Relations (2002–2022)
The literature highlights the conflicting trends between rising nationalism and stable preferences for status quo on cross-strait relations in Taiwan. This article provides new insights from the Taiwan National Security Survey (2002–2022, 14 waves, n = 16, 494) to help explain this apparent inconsistency. The surveys employed “conditional preference” items to capture how the cross-strait attitudes of Taiwanese people are shaped. Since 2002, Taiwa…
Public support for the use of force in non-Western and non-major powers: The case of a China–Taiwan war
Studies of public support for war among non-Western and non-major powers (NWNM) states are distinctive from United States foreign military operations. First, these wars often intrude on subjects’ direct livelihood. Second, great powers’ intervention can drastically alter the outcome of these wars. These factors have not been examined extensively in the war support literature. We fill this gap by spearheading several hypotheses of war support uniq…
Judicial reasoning, individual cultural types, and support for Covid-19 vaccine mandates
With heated political and public debate over government vaccine mandates, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to better understand the role of policy justifications on people's perceptions towards a policy. Through this study, we aim to move beyond the partisan and ideological arguments for and against vaccine mandates to illustrate how individuals' worldviews, based on Cultural Theory, can better explain why people have different perceptions towards …
The Ripple Effect: How the Russo–Ukrainian War Shaped Public Perception of Presidential Performance in Taiwan
This study investigates the impact of the 2022 Russo–Ukrainian War on public evaluations of presidential performance in Taiwan. It argues that an international crisis, when perceived as a plausible threat to individuals’ immediate environment and linked to past events with tangible physical or financial consequences, can trigger a rally-around-the-flag effect, leading to increased public support for the incumbent president. Utilising a quasi-expe…
Political science (28 works) · Law (20 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Economics (16 works) · China (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Psychology (14 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (10 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (9 works)