Changes in The Association with Authoritarian Attitudes and Birth Cohorts: The Case of Japan

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Political Attitudes (Table 17)

Abstract

Previous studies have argued that young generations are becoming more authoritarian and, therefore, more likely to support right-wing political parties recently. In contrast, this article insists that young generations in Japan are becoming rather anti-authoritarian. They are more likely to resist liberal and democratic values because they perceive these as old values supported by older generations. To examine this hypothesis, I analyzed changes in the authoritarian attitudes of Japanese people based on data from the National Survey of Social Stratification and Social Mobility in 2005 and 2015 (SSM 2005 and SSM 2015). By considering the role of differences in birth cohorts in the changes in the distribution of authoritarian attitudes, the hypothesis was supported. Moreover, the following facts were clarified: differences in the original authoritarian attitudes (attitudes observed in 2005) across birth cohorts and differences in the degree of change in authoritarian attitudes across birth cohorts are simultaneously associated with changes in the distribution of authoritarian attitudes. Consequently, even though the distribution of authoritarian attitudes seemed to change uniformly across age groups and to reveal a slight trend toward conservatism among younger age groups, the gaps in authoritarian attitudes among birth cohorts had widened between 2005 and 2015.

Author

• Naoki Sudo, Hitotsubashi University