Political Authoritarianism and Political Participation

• In Event: 40851 - Democracy and Authoritarianism

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between individual level measures of political authoritarianism and political involvement beyond the scope of voting behaviors. One major contradiction in the political authoritarianism literature is the assumption that authoritarians submit to authority without adequately differentiating which authorities someone who scores high on authoritarianism will listen to. This paper aims to resolve this contradiction first by conducting exploratory factor analysis on political participation and second by conducting factor analysis on the following indicators of political authoritarianism: valuing positions within hierarchy, attitudes towards the status quo, populism, nationalism, and racial animus. Data were derived from the 2016 and 2020 ANES and comparisons were made between both years to examine any shifts in political consciousness. I found that participation is divided into two main factors; "establishment" measures based on donations, voting, and other more socially accepted vehicles for social change and "community" based measures that are based on banding together outside of the established political system e.g. protesting and boycotts. In 2016 those who scored high on the childrearing measure of political authoritarianism had a negative relationship with both community and establishment vehicles for social change and those who scored high in nationalism also had a negative relationship with community-based engagement. The only relationship that was positive was participation by those highly invested in the status quo. This relationship remains stable throughout 2020 with a handful of key differences. Namely the relationship between nationalism and community involvement vanishes, but racial animus becomes a statistically significant negative predictor. This indicates that authoritarians across the board are less likely to be involved in politics on any level and begets further analysis on how valid authorities are distinguished.

Author

• Adam Loesch, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee