Liberty or equality? The neglected cultural values between inequality and democratic support

There is an endless story between the inequality of economic distribution, the emergence and consolidation of democracies, and the waxing and waning of people's demand for them. Most of these explanations are based on the first two of the three leading research approaches in political science: rationality, structure and culture (Lichbach and Zuckerman, 2009). However, this paper aims to bring back cultural factors into the relationship between inequality and democratic support. In this paper, traditional cultural values are disentangled from the dimensions of 'liberty' and 'equality. We assume that people's preferences for 'liberty' and 'equality' will determine their innate preferences for democracies and their perceptions of social justice and redistribution, producing different effects on democratic support when social inequality changes. This paper argues that 'equality' values exacerbate people's distrust of democracies due to unequal economic distribution. In contrast, people's 'liberty' values immunise people against the effects of social inequality on support for democracy. Using the Asian Barometer Survey and the World Values Survey as analytical data, this paper distinguishes traditional cultural values into four different dimensions and finds that anti-liberal cultural values are harmful to democratic support. In contrast, equality-related values are not related to democratic support but were highly influential on people's approval of government redistribution policies. Using multilevel regression analysis, we test the primary hypothesis that a value system that prefers liberty will directly positively impact democratic support. In contrast, values that emphasise equality will hurt democratic support as inequality rises. Through the assumptions and analyses in this paper, we find that culture is still influential. A distinction between dimensions within the culture will help us distinguish between different cultural dimensions of democratic support and perceptions of inequality. On the other hand, the value of equality deserves more attention in this era of democratic de-consolidation. The rise of social inequality at the aggregate level undermines the legitimacy of democracy, whereas the value of liberty in maintaining democratic support. In the meantime, we should still hope that other factors like education can mitigate the elasticity of democratic support caused by the value of equality. Conclusively, it is hoped that more attention to culture will lead to a deeper study of democratic support and provide a diagnosis and prescription to every democracy in the stagnant consolidation.