The buffering effect of government responsiveness on authoritarian values and political trust: a cross-national study of 15 Asia-Pacific societies

ABSTRACT Prevailing scholarship contends that individual-level non-democratic tendencies are strongly associated with their tendency to cast higher levels of political trust, both institutionally and culturally. However, a good deal of these works failed to account that this mass behaviour does not necessarily flow in a linear fashion. Instead, it could be significantly moderated by perceived government responsiveness. In this study, we probe how the strong association between authoritarian values and political trust is moderated by citizens' perception of their incumbent government as performing responsively. Drawing on public opinion data across 15 Asia-Pacific societies from the fifth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS), our paper reveals two findings. First, there is a strong positive association between authoritarian values and political trust, i.e. greater authoritarian values lead to higher political trust. Second, this relationship is conditional or moderated by government responsiveness. That is, political trust of highly authoritarian citizens tends to be higher only in less responsive conditions. In contrast, their political trust tends to be lower when in high responsive contexts. In other words, the positive effect of authoritarian values towards political trust will be substantially diminished in highly responsive environments. Ultimately, these findings not only bring about the enduring legacy of authoritarian values in the region but also provide nuanced insights on how responsive governance can attenuate authoritarian inclinations.