Broken back? Efficacy and participation in Asia’s democracies

Abstract

Previous scholarship describes an inconsistent role for democratic institutions in driving political participation. Some research has detected signs of attachment leading to greater engagement while others observe a negative, statistical relationship (Levi and Stoker, 2000). In the liberal and electoral democracies of Asia, where support for democratic values appears to be growing (Chu and Huang, 2010; Sanborn, 2015), institutions have taken an outsized role in an individual’s decision to participate. This may be reflective of a ‘broken back’ form of democratization, where an engaged citizenry is continually frustrated by poor performing government actors (Rose and Shin, 2001). In this article, I evaluate the role of efficacy, internal and external, on the decision to attend rallies, participate in campaigns, and contact officials. I find that citizens engage in these actions when they are internally engaged in politics and frustrated with government performance. While this finding offers a simple explanation for the decision to participate, it also signifies the obstacles to democratic consolidation posed by poor-performing institutional actors.