Authoritarians’ Economic Preferences: Check your Pocket Book or Follow the Norm?

• In Event: The Role of Norms in Public Opinion and Political Behavior

Abstract

The lack of support for redistributive policy to alleviate increasing inequality observed in many societies sparked the interests of pundits and scholars to explore what underlies people’s preferences on economic policies. As socio-demographic variables fail to explain one’s stance on economic issues, the present study tackles this question by examining the interplay between authoritarianism, as an individual level disposition, and redistributive norms at the societal level. Given that conforming to established norms and following authority’s guide characterize authoritarianism, we hypothesize that the economic preference of people who score high on this scale echoes the nature of the redistributive norm of a society. Our cross-national analysis confirms this hypothesis. To better illustrate the casual mechanism, we also conducted a survey experiment.

Authors

• Yangzi Zhao, Stony Brook University

• Michelle Io-Low