The Impact of Democratic Value Orientations on Regime Support in Democratic, Hybrid and Authoritarian Regimes

Political values are often conceptualized as pre-determining more specific political attitudes such as regime support. Based on the assumption of internal attitudinal coherence, democratic value orientations should have a decidedly negative influence on regime support in non-democratic contexts, while a positive relationship is more likely – although, as the critical citizens literature suggests, not granted – in democratic settings. However, empirical tests of this proposition are still scarce. This paper seeks to fill this gap by using comparative survey data (Afrobarometer 2011-2013, Asian Barometer 2010-2012) to systematically explore the relationship between orientations towards democratic values and support for the actual incumbent regime in a total of 48 democratic, hybrid and authoritarian regimes, focussing on two main questions: How strong is the impact of political value orientations compared to other sources of regime support? Do the (relative) strength and direction of their impact vary depending on the type of incumbent regime?