Partisanship and citizen politics in East Asia.

Chu, Yun-han ; Huang, Min-hua

This article assesses the relative importance of partisanship in explaining level of citizens' political engagement within a multivariate framework. In particular, we examine if the relative worth of partisan attachment in explaining civic engagement differs systematically between East Asian emerging democracies and established democracies. We find that partisanship in East Asia exerts just as much influence on citizens' engagement in politics as in established democracies. The global trend in which interest associations and social movements are becoming vigorous competitors to parties for the opportunity to represent and mobilize citizens in democratic process has also spread to East Asia.

KEYWORDS: partisanship, political participation, East Asian democracy, citizen politics

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Among the many functions that parties perform in democracies, by connecting citizens to the process of democratic governance, political parties give citizens a sense of involvement and empowerment. The early Michigan election studies demonstrated how partisanship was a core element in political identities and behaviors. (1) Later on, researchers developed a functional theory of party identification, conceptualizing partisanship as a heuristic for organizing political information, evaluations, and behaviors. (2) Partisanship provides a strong cue-giving function for voting, more than any other social group cues, because elections essentially involve partisan choices. Partisan ties also motivate citizens to take part in the political process. As Russell Dalton explained it, "Just like sports loyalties, attachment to a political party draws an individual into the electoral process to support his or her side." (3) Thus, partisanship is routinely identified as a strong predictor of a wide range of political predispositions and participatory actions ranging from political efficacy to psychological involvement in politics, voting, and campaign activities.

Is this view about the impact of partisanship on political participation transferable to East Asian democracies? This is a very germane research question for both practical and theoretical reasons. First, if partisan attachment exhibits a similar orienting and mobilizing function in East Asian democracies as in established democracies, it provides a strong sign that the region's emerging competitive party systems are helping connect citizens to the democratic process. This, in turn, will contribute to the consolidation of new democracies. Second, this question addresses the core assumption of the institutionalist perspective, which privileges the socializing effects of institutions in shaping citizens' behavior, preference, or even identity over time. (4) In East Asia both the rules of democratic contestation and institutional forms of political parties were transplanted from the West. If partisanship can perform the similar function of orienting and mobilizing citizens in East Asia, this provides strong support for the institutionalist assertion that similar institutions tend to bring about similar behavioral and attitudinal consequences.

With the recent release of two cross-national surveys, we can now systematically investigate the role of partisan attachment to motivate East Asian citizens to be involved in both electoral and nonelectoral contexts. Our analysis proceeds in three steps: we examine some of the skepticism about both the temporal validity and cross-regional transferability of this partisanship theory, formulate our key hypotheses and research strategy, and report the empirical findings.

Parties and Partisanship in East Asia

We can immediately identify two plausible counterarguments for why the general theory of partisanship's mobilizing effects may lose its validity when it travels to East Asian democracies. First, there is a general (global) trend of decreasing relevance of parties as a vehicle of political mobilization and channel of interest aggregation. Second, there is the inchoate nature of party systems in many East Asian democracies. Both point to the possible attenuating effect of some prevailing structural conditions.

In most third-wave East Asian democracies, a competitive party system was created at a time when political parties were losing relevance in established democracies as vehicles of representation and instruments of mobilization. This trend is well documented in the recent literature on the "decline" of parties: parties are increasingly failing in their capacity to engage the ordinary citizen; citizens are less likely to show up at polling stations. And with a weaker sense of partisan consistency, citizens are increasingly reluctant to engage in more demanding forms of participation or commit themselves to parties, whether in terms of identification or membership. (5)

In addition, profound social changes are reshaping the role of political parties and nature of partisanship. The historical rigidities and inequalities of European societies that gave rise to the distinctive left-right cleavage have been substantially leveled by economic prosperity and expanding access to education. Ideological conflict over the role of the state has increasingly given way to concern with "postmaterialist" quality of life issues. (6) Ideological differences between parties in established democracies have narrowed and become more fluid "as party systems float in search of a new grand line of cleavage." (7) In addition, parties have lost their preeminent role in the representation and aggregation of interests. As the political skills of the public increase and information costs decrease, more citizens now possess the political resources and skills that better prepare them to deal with the complexities of politics and reach their own political decisions without reliance on affective, habitual party cues or other surrogates. (8) At the same time, interest associations and social movements have become much more vigorous competitors to parties for the opportunity to represent and mobilize citizens outside the electoral arena. (9)

In East Asia, political parties hold a markedly privileged position within the democratic institutional framework. They remain dominant in structuring the electoral process, governing, and integrating (at least symbolically) citizens into the democratic process. At the same time, many of these societies have leapfrogged into socioeconomic modernization in a compressed time. As a result, both the material and cultural environments in which most of these parties operate come much closer to the social conditions of the advanced industrialized societies today than those of earlier historical eras. This means East Asian democracies may follow the trend of party decline even at their quite junior stage of democratic life cycle.

There is a second and even more powerful counterargument why the theory of the mobilizing function of partisanship deserves some scrutiny when it is applied to East Asian democracies. Both the parties and the party systems in most East Asian democracies are still far away from being institutionalized. (10) As discussed in the introduction to this collection, most East Asian parties have not yet acquired consistent patterns of internal organization, mass mobilization, and leadership succession. Most of the major political parties in East Asia are of recent creation, and only a few of them enjoy an extended life span. They lack the kind of organizational complexity to protect their autonomy from their founding personalities. As Ian McAllister's article has demonstrated, most parties lack organic ties with major socioeconomic groups. Most notably, party systems in East Asia typically do not exhibit institutionalized programmatic electoral competition. The familiar left-right cleavage has been absent in most East Asian contexts (see article by Dalton and Aiji Tanaka in this issue). Generally speaking, during the last decade institutionalized party systems have been emerging in Japan and Taiwan and to some extent in South Korea and Mongolia as well. However, in all four cases the dust of party realignment and dealignment has not completely settled yet.

In a nutshell, the inchoate nature of political parties and party system in East Asia should reduce the mobilizing function of partisanship (as well as other consequences). Under such conditions, the level of partisan attachment is not widespread, it is susceptible to the short-term fluctuation of the electoral fortune of a given party, and it is causally independent of (or prior to) other relevant political predispositions that are conducive to political participation.

Examining the Explanatory Power of Partisanship

Partisanship is not the only factor contributing to citizens' psychological involvement and political participation. Nor does partisan attachment exert its impact in isolation. The existing literatures on political participation identify a series of important attitudinal, sociological, and institutional factors that are conducive (or inhibiting) to citizens' engagement in the political process.

At the microlevel, the familiar socioeconomic status (SES) model of political participation posits that people with higher income, education, and social status tend to have a higher sense of political involvement and are more likely to participate. (11) Certain political predispositions such as political efficacy and sense of citizen duties are also strong predictors of political participation. (12) In the context of emerging democracies, scholars have found that belief in democratic legitimacy and enthusiasm about the performance of the new regime also motivate people to participate. (13) Assessing the causal relationships between these civic attitudes and positive orientations toward democracy and political participation helps us understand the nature of these participatory acts. A positive relationship usually suggests that participation grows from below by free-thinking citizens rather than being institutionally mobilized from above. (14)

Next, variables operating at meso-level--that is, at the level of the social milieu where individuals are situated, such as party affiliation, membership in civic organizations, and social networks--have been stressed by recent research on social capital. (15) In this view, whether citizens are active and engaged participants--or whether they are alienated and cynical nonparticipants--depends on the available level of social capital.

In addition, some scholars have emphasized macronational variables, such as design of electoral system and the overall constitutional framework, as predictors of participation. (16) For instance, proportional representation systems typically stimulate election turnout.

Our primary task is to assess the relative importance of partisanship in explaining level of citizens' political engagement within a multivariate framework that takes into account most of these alternative causal arguments. In particular, we examine if the relative impact of partisan attachment in explaining civic engagement differs systematically between East Asian emerging democracies and the Western established democracies.

Lastly, citizens' engagement in politics carries a number of behavioral aspects. These different forms of participation occur in different institutional contexts; require the employment of varying degrees of knowledge, skills, and resources; and are oftentimes precipitated by different motivations and objectives. (17) For instance, satisfaction with the performance of a democratic regime might be positively associated with a higher level of conventional electoral participation but negatively associated with participation in protests and demonstration. Casting a vote in an election is the most common mode of political participation in representative democracies. But voting turnout can often overstate the extent to which citizens truly participate in public decision-making. Citizens can be mobilized to vote through psychological or materialist inducement even when they have no clear choice among competing candidates. So voting alone cannot provide a full indication of people's participation in democratic self-governance.

We also need to consider participation in campaigning, contacting, and protesting, in order to assess how actively citizens engage in public decisionmaking. (18) It is also important to differentiate election-related activities from citizen-initiated participation in nonelectoral context. Other things being equal, partisan attachment tends to exert greater impact on the former than the latter because electoral contest essentially involves partisan competition.

Research Design

In the analyses that follow, our two dependent variables are electoral participation and nonelectoral participation. Electoral participation refers to short-term activities that respondents do during elections, such as persuading others to vote for a particular party or candidate, engaging campaign activities, or casting a ballot. Nonelectoral participation refers to political activities that people do in ordinary time, such as contacting politicians, taking part in a protest or demonstration, or working with others who share the same concern. (19)

We use two datasets available to test the explanatory power of partisanship: the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES module 2) and the first-wave East Asia Barometer (EAB). (20) Since there are some noticeable differences in the wording and format of certain questionnaire items that are supposed to measure the same variable between the two cross-national surveys, we only include items from the two surveys that are comparable on the basis of functional equivalence.

In many ways, the two datasets complement each other. The CSES module 2 is more extensive in its geographic scope, covering thirty-one countries, but it is more limited in its inclusion of variables. The EAB round 1 covered only East Asian countries but includes a full array of relevant explanatory variables. Therefore, we employ the CSES dataset to examine if there are systematic differences between East Asian democracies and established democracies in the patterns of causal relationship. We have to settle for a more limited statistical model when using the CSES. However, we can employ the EAB dataset to test our key hypothesis in a more fully specified model and more closely examine the peculiarities among the seven East Asian countries.

We include four groups of explanatory variables whenever possible. The first group is related to psychological variables such as Party Attachment, Internal Efficacy, and Social Capital. (21) The second group taps attitudes toward democracy, specifically Belief in Democratic Legitimacy and Satisfaction with Democracy. The next group is about evaluation of governance, including Government Performance or Perceived Level of Corruption. The last group is socioeconomic background variables such as Religiosity, Income, Education, Gender, and Age. Details about the operationalization of all the dependent and explanatory variables are in the Appendix.

The basic tool for analyzing the two datasets is ordinal logistic regression since the dependent variable is measured by a four-point Liken scale. With the number of country samples around thirty in the CSES dataset, we apply hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) to determine whether the factors accounting for political participation are systematically different among established democracies, East Asian emerging democracies, and other third-wave democracies. Also, the measures of internal efficacy and social capital in the EAB allow us to implement structural equation modeling in these seven nations to tease out whether certain psychological variables might function as intermediary variables between partisanship and political participation.

We apply structural equation modeling to EAB data to capture both the direct and indirect causal effects of partisanship. More specifically, we want to test whether the effect of partisanship on political participation is also mediated through internal political efficacy. Endogenous variables in the above structural equation model (SEM) are therefore (Non)Electoral Participation and Internal Efficacy. (22) The explanatory variable to account for (non)electoral participation is the same as specified in the ordinal logistic regression, and for the internal efficacy variable our basic model assumes only four explanatory variables, such as Party Attachment, Education, Gender, and Age, while allowing modification when the basic model has poor fit, and thus other explanatory variables may be added.

Corresponding to the four groups of explanatory variables, we examine the following hypothesized causal relationships:

* Hypothesis 1 (partisanship): The stronger the party attachment, the higher the level of political participation in both electoral and nonelectoral context.

* Hypothesis 2a (democratic legitimacy): The stronger the belief in democratic legitimacy, the higher the level of political participation in both electoral and nonelectoral context.

* Hypothesis 2b (satisfaction with democracy): The higher the satisfaction with democracy, the higher the level of electoral participation, but the higher the satisfaction, the lower the level of nonelectoral participation.

* Hypothesis 3 (government evaluations): The more favorable the evaluation of governance, the higher the level of electoral participation, but the more favorable the evaluation, the lower the level of nonelectoral participation.

* Hypothesis 4 (social structure model): People who are richer, more religious, and better educated are more likely to participate in both electoral and nonelectoral context.

Empirical Findings

To begin, it is useful to examine where participation levels in East Asian democracies stand in the larger international context. Figure 1 locates a country's average level of partisanship on the horizontal axis and its average level of electoral participation on the vertical axis (both variables are measured on four-point scales). There are four notable patterns. First, except for Japan, the average level of partisanship among East Asian countries is comparatively lower than most established democracies. This largely confirms our suspicion that partisanship should be less crystallized due to a lower level of institutionalization of their party system. (23) Second, among the five East Asian countries in the CSES, the strength of partisanship goes largely in tandem with the level of institutionalization of the party system. Japan arguably has the most institutionalized party system, and the Philippines lags behind most other Asian democracies. Third, the average level of electoral participation of East Asian countries is comparatively lower than that of the established democracies, with the exception of the Philippines. (24) Fourth, East Asian countries do not conform to the larger macrolevel pattern that suggests a weak linear relationship between level of partisanship and level of electoral participation. (25) Instead, the level of electoral participation varies little among Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, with the Philippines being the clear outlier.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In Figure 2 the level of nonelectoral participation is located on the vertical axis (also on a four-point scale), and partisanship, on the horizontal axis. (26) The variation in nonelectoral participation among CSES countries is not that great. Within this narrow band of variation, East Asian countries (again with the exception of the Philippines) tend to have lower levels of nonelectoral participation than established democracies or other emerging democracies. Also, there is no visible linear pattern between the two variables either across all CSES country cases or among five East Asian countries.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Microlevel Analyses: CSES

The two scatter plots tell us little about the causal dynamics at the individual level, so we proceed to a country-by-country analysis of the CSES data. Tables 1 and 2 present the results from an ordinal multivariate regression analysis predicting electoral and nonelectoral participation. (27) The table presents the unstandardized regression coefficients. Congruent to what we expected in hypothesis 1, party attachment shows a positive relationship with both electoral and nonelectoral participation in all five East Asian countries. For instance, a one-category increase in the strength of partisanship in Japan increases the average level of electoral activity by the log-odds ratio of 0.64, which means that the expected probability of participating in at least one electoral activity increases from 60.1 percent to 91.1 percent as the respondent's level of partisanship varies from lowest to highest. (28)

The explanatory power of other variables varies greatly, most of them largely in agreement with our hypotheses. But individual cases have their own patterns of causal relationship and some of the findings run counter to our expectations. For instance, in most countries satisfaction with democracy exerts no impact on both electoral participation and nonelectoral participation. However, in Hong Kong satisfaction with democracy influences both electoral and nonelectoral participation, but in a negative way. This finding may reflect the specific context of Hong Kong's truncated democracy, in which a large number of citizens vote to show their support for prodemocracy parties exactly because they are not happy with Beijing's suppression of popular demand for a full democracy. Many prodemocracy Hong Kong citizens also participated in the annual demonstration on July 1 registering their demand for popular election for the chief executive and their objection to the enactment of a national security law. (29) In a similar vein, many South Koreans participated in demonstrations surrounding the controversies over the impeachment of the president. This explains the negative relationship between satisfaction with democracy and nonelectoral participation.

Evaluations of government performance in South Korea and the Philippines show a positive relationship to both electoral and nonelectoral participation. These findings partially run counter to our hypothesis 3 as far as the nonelectoral participation is concerned. Again, this result is not difficult to understand in the specific context. Since political parties in both countries were orbiting around their political stars when these surveys were conducted, voters were more easily mobilized in support of their leaders especially when they were doing a great job (although this no longer applies to the Korean case).

The other noteworthy finding is that religiosity plays a very significant factor in Japan and Taiwan. A plausible explanation is that grassroots religious organizations in Japan and Taiwan are quite extensive and popular and they are often linked with local factions. Therefore, they are an important channel of political mobilization. (30)

With regard to the demographic variables, people who are more educated, male, and older tend to have a higher electoral or nonelectoral participation. This generally conforms to the standard SES model of political participation. The most significant finding is that the goodness-of-fit (in terms of pseudo R-square) of the five models predicting level of electoral participation goes up with the degree of the country's party system institutionalization, if we accept that Japan is the most institutionalized and Hong Kong and the Philippines are the least.

Since the average level of electoral participation in the Philippines is the highest among the five, we suspect that many of these participatory activities were mobilized by political groups in the highly divisive nature of the 2004 election, rather than initiated spontaneously by the citizens. This neat pattern breaks down when it comes to nonelectoral participation. In Table 2, the models for Japan and Taiwan suffer the poorest goodness-of-fit, suggesting that in these two countries nonelectoral participation involves mainly citizen-initiative contact about personal issues. (31)

Our HGLM models show that most findings across the three blocs of countries are corroborated with the results of the ordinal logistic regression, except for the contextual effect that citizens in established democracies are more active in nonelectoral participation (something shown in Figure 2). (32) Furthermore, our HGLM models show that there is virtually no difference between established democracies and emerging democracies in East Asia. (33)

The magnitude of effect of partisanship on both electoral and nonelectoral participation also shows no difference among the three blocs of countries. This means partisanship as a motivating force behind political participation matters everywhere, and it matters as much in East Asian emerging democracies as elsewhere. Last, it appears that some of the explanatory variables exert different kinds of impact on electoral versus nonelectoral participation. Specifically, belief in democracy and a perception of less corruption increase electoral participation but not nonelectoral participation. Satisfaction with democracy and evaluation of government performance function the other way around. This suggests that electoral participation is motivated by ideological factors such as belief in democratic legitimacy and the perception of clean government, while nonelectoral participation is driven more by short-term factors such as dissatisfaction with the government and discontent with the way democracy works.

Microlevel Analyses: East Asian Barometer

While the CSES data help us identify similarities among established democracies, East Asian emerging democracies, and other third-wave democracies, it remains to be seen if the explanatory power of partisanship still holds up when more East Asian countries are added to our analysis. A fuller set of control variables is included and a more complex structural relationship is taken into account using the EAB data.

Tables 3 and 4 report the findings of our SEM analysis. (34) The top half of the two tables presents the statistical association of explanatory variables to the major dependent variables, Electoral Participation and Nonelectoral Participation. The lower half exhibits the relationships of various independent (exogenous) variables that can possibly explain the intermediary variable, internal efficacy. The regression coefficients in the two tables, that is, the two equations, were estimated simultaneously. A striking finding is that partisanship remains a very powerful factor in explaining both electoral and nonelectoral participation across East Asia in the models displayed in the top half of both tables. It falls outside the significance level only in two countries and only for nonelectoral participation. Social capital in terms of group membership is another equally important predictor of participation. Social capital is a significant predictor for higher level of electoral participation across all seven countries and an important explanatory source for nonelectoral participation in five out of seven East Asian cases.

Internal efficacy emerges as the third most consistent predictor of political participation albeit not to the same extent as partisanship or group membership. The analysis also provides support for our hypothesis about the indirect causal effect of partisanship passing through internal efficacy. For the four cases where internal efficacy exerts significant impact on electoral participation, partisanship is a strong predictor of internal political efficacy in three countries, namely Japan, Thailand, and Mongolia. In the case of electoral participation, it is also a significant predictor in the same three countries.

With regard to other explanatory variables, belief in democracy, satisfaction with democracy, and perceived corruption do not show much explanatory power for participation. Government performance, income, education, and gender do have explanatory power in some cases, but no clear regional pattern can be drawn. Religiosity, as with the CSES data, is conducive to electoral participation in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, where grassroots religious organizations are often linked with local factions. Finally, much as in the established democracies, older people have a higher level of electoral participation but this does not apply to nonelectoral participation.

There are some interesting country-specific structural relationships that deviate from this regionwide generalization. In South Korea and Taiwan, strength of partisan attachment fails to explain nonelectoral participation either directly or indirectly through the intermediary of internal efficacy. In contrast to the SEM estimation for South Korea and Taiwan in Table 3, we found very few meaningful predictors for level of nonelectoral participation in these two countries on Table 4. This implies that in these two countries, the more popular form of nonelectoral participation is citizen-initiated contact driven by private concern and oftentimes in an ad hoc manner. In Mongolia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, internal political efficacy loses its explanatory power when it comes to nonelectoral participation (Table 4). This again suggests that unlike electoral participation that is structured by very similar institutional settings across countries, nonelectoral participation can take place under very different political contexts, requires very different kinds of skills and resources, and is driven by a variety of motivation.

A few East Asian countries deviate from our basic model explaining internal political efficacy (presented in the lower half of Tables 3 and 4). In Japan, Mongolia, and South Korea, in addition to partisanship, education, gender, and age, dissatisfaction with the way democracy works is significantly associated with higher levels of internal efficacy, and indirectly affects the level of electoral as well as nonelectoral participation. (35) This suggests that in these two countries, political participation carries some element of political protest. Social capital in the form of group membership is significantly associated with internal efficacy in the Philippines, Mongolia, and Taiwan. This implies that civic groups function as agents of political socialization parallel to political parties, in addition to its direct mobilizing power in fostering political participation.

Interestingly, the intermediary effect of internal political efficacy seems related to favorable evaluation of government in South Korea and can be regarded as an endorsement of the incumbent government, but it is more of a middle-class phenomenon in Taiwan since people who are richer, are more educated, have a more extensive social network, and hold a stronger belief in democracy tend to join nonelectoral political activities with strong internal political efficacy.

Conclusion

We started this article with four sets of general proposition: First we expected that the level of partisanship in East Asian emerging democracies will be comparatively lower than established democracies. Among the East Asian countries, partisanship should be slightly higher in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea as more institutionalized party systems. Second, we expected that the impact of partisanship on political participation would be significant in East Asia, but not as strong as in established democracies because of the underdeveloped nature of most East Asian party systems. Third, we expected partisanship to exert a direct causal impact on participation, and a significant indirect effect as it raises citizens' sense of political efficacy. Fourth, partisanship's direct impact on voting and campaign activities would be more salient than nonelectoral participation, which in East Asian context oftentimes involves particularistic concerns without clear partisan connotation.

Most of our predictions are corroborated with our statistical analyses, with one notable exception. Our data consistently show that in East Asia partisanship exerts just as much influence on citizens' engagement in politics as what has been the case in established democracies. On this score, there is no empirical ground for "East Asian Exceptionalism."

Our research also starts with the premise that higher levels of citizens' engagement in the political process contribute to the consolidation of democracy in the long run. Politicians can be more effectively held accountable, constitutionally guaranteed rights can be more thoroughly enforced, and groups' and communities' demands can be better represented within the policy process when ordinary citizens participate more actively in the politics of their country. As more people are drawn into the process of democratic governance, the political regime enjoys a more solid foundation of legitimacy. (36) In this sense, political parties in East Asia, despite their many shortcomings and inchoate nature, remain indispensable in the consolidation of democracies. Even in countries where partisan attachment is not as widespread, it is still the single most important factor contributing to a higher sense of efficacy and higher level of electoral and nonelectoral participation. This reinforces Dalton and Martin E Wattenberg's observation that "it remains difficult to think of national governments functioning without parties playing a significant role in connecting the various elements of the political process." (37)

Another noteworthy finding is the importance of social capital, especially in the form of group membership, in facilitating citizens' engagement in the political process and raising a sense of political efficacy. In many ways, the magnitude and consistency of its impact are comparable to those of party attachment across East Asia. This suggests that East Asian democracies are also catching on to a global trend in which interest associations and social movements are becoming vigorous competitors to parties for the opportunity to mobilize citizens in the democratic process. However, it remains to be seen if this trend will enhance or inhibit the institutionalization of political parties in East Asia.

Lastly, our empirical results lend a strong support to the institutionalist claim that people develop certain orientations toward the political world as a consequence of the organizing principles of formal and informal institutions. Despite their varying degree of institutionalization, we are witnessing the powerful socializing effects of the region's emerging competitive party systems on East Asian citizens' behavior, preference, or even identity.

Appendix: The Construction of the Variables

Variable Name Operationalization

Electoral The number of positive answers to the questions
Participation Whether the respondents voted in the latest
 and previous elections," "Whether the respondents
 persuade others to vote for a candidate," and
 "Whether the respondents participate campaign
 activities." Missing values are coded as zero.

Nonelectoral The number of positive answers to the questions
Participation Whether the respondents had done the following
 things over the past five years: (1) contact
 politicians or officials, (2) protest or
 demonstration, (3) work with other to share
 concern." Missing values are coded as zero.

Party Attachment "Do you feel very close to this [party/party
 block], somewhat close, or not very close?"
 Recoded in a reversed order. Missing value means
 the respondents did not identify any party or
 party block they feel close to and therefore is
 coded as zero.

Internal Efficacy Summing answers on the questions "I think I
 have the ability to participate in politics"
 and "Sometimes politics and government seem so
 complicated that a person like me can't really
 understand what is going on" (coded in the
 reversed order).

Social Capital-- The number of formal groups with which a
Membership respondent is affiliated.

Social Capital-- "Would you say that 'Most people can be
Trust trusted' or 'you can't be too careful in
 dealing with them?"'

Belief in "How strongly do you agree or disagree with
Democracy the following statement: 'Democracy
 may have problems but it's better than any other
 form of government."' Recoding in a reversed
 order and the answer is dichotomized.

Satisfaction with "On the whole, are you very satisfied, or not
Democracy at all satisfied with the way democracy
 works in your country?" Recoding in a reversed
 order.

Government "Now thinking about the performance in
Performance [capital]/president in general, how good or
 bad a job do you think the government/president
 in [capital] has done over the past several
 years?" Recoding in a reversed order.

Corruption "How widespread do you think corruption such as
 bribe taking is amongst politicians in your
 country?" Recoding in a reversed order.

Religiosity Frequency of Religious Attendance, coding as
 follows: "1" (never), "2" (once a year), "3"
 (less than once a month), "4" (more than or
 equal to once a month), "5" (more than or equal
 to once a week).

Income "As for your own family, how do you rate your
 economic situation today?" Coding as "very good"
 (first quintile), "good" (second quintile), "so
 so" (third quintile), "bad" (fourth quintile),
 and "very bad" (last quintile).

Education Level of Education, coding as "1" (no formal
 education or incomplete primary), "2" (complete
 primary), "3" (incomplete secondary), "4"
 (complete secondary), "5" (post-secondary/some
 university-level), "6" (university degree
 completed or above).

Gender Respondents' gender.

Age Respondents' age.

Established Stable democracy over 20 years is coded as
Democracy 1, otherwise coded as "0".

Asian Democracy Except Japan, a democratic country in Asia is
 coded as "1", otherwise coded as "0".

Other Third-Wave The democracies in the CSES module 2 that do
Democracy not belong to "Established Democracy"
 or to "Asian Democracy."

Variable Name Range CSES EAB

Electoral 0(Lowest)-- B3001_1 Q27
Participation 3(Highest) B3001_2 Q29
 B3004_1 Q30

Nonelectoral 0(Lowest)-- B3042_1 {Q73,Q75,Q76}
Participation 3(Highest) B3042_2 {Q77,Q78}
 B3042_3 Q79

Party Attachment 0(Lowest)-- B3036 Q62
 3(Highest)

Internal Efficacy 2(Lowest)-- -- Q126
 8(Highest) Q127

Social Capital-- 0(Lowest)-- -- Q20
Membership 3(Highest)

Social Capital-- 1(Trusted), -- Q24
Trust 2(Careful)

Belief in 1(Disagree), B3015 Q117
Democracy 2(Agree)

Satisfaction with 1(Lowest)-- B3012 Q98
Democracy 4(Highest)

Government 1(Lowest)-- B3011 Q104
Performance 4(Highest)

Corruption 1(Lowest)-- B3044 Q115
 4(Highest)

Religiosity 1(Lowest)-- B2023 SE7
 5(Highest)

Income 1(Lowest)-- B2020 Q4
 5(Highest)

Education 1(Lowest)-- B2003 SE5
 6(Highest)

Gender 1(men) B2002 SE2
 2(women)

Age 16-101 B2001 SE3a

Established Dummy -- --
Democracy

Asian Democracy Dummy -- --

Other Third-Wave Dummy -- --
Democracy

Notes

(1.) Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960); Angus Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order (New York: Wiley, 1967).

(2.) Ole Borre and Daniel Katz, "Party Identification and Its Motivational Base in a Multiparty System," Scandinavian Political Studies 8 (1973): 69-111; Warren Miller, "The Cross-National Use of Party Identification as a Stimulus to Political Inquiry." In Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe, and Dennis Farlie, eds., Party Identification and Beyond (New York: Wiley, 1976); Warren Miller and J. Merrill Shanks, The New American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

(3.) Russell J. Dalton, "Partisan Mobilization, Cognitive Mobilization and the Changing American Electorate," Electoral Studies (forthcoming).

(4.) Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor, "Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms," Political Studies 44, no. 5 (1996): 936-957.

(5.) Martin Wattenberg, The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-96 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Peter Mair and Ingrid van Biezen, "Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 19802000," Party Politics 7, no. 1 (2001): 5-21.

(6.) Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Americanization of the European Left." In Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther, eds., Political Parties and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

(7.) Ibid., p. 54.

(8.) Dalton, "Partisan Mobilization, Cognitive Mobilization."

(9.) Philippe Schmitter, "Parties Are Not What They Once Were." In Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther, eds., Political Parties and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

(10.) It is worth noting that the two aspects of institutionalization are empirically related but conceptually distinctive. See Vicky Randall and Lars Svasand, "Party Institutionalization in New Democracies," Party Politics 8, no. 1 (2002): 5-29.

(11.) Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); Henry Brady, Sidney Verba, and Kay Schlozman, "Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation," American Political Science Review 89, no. 2 (1995): 271-294; Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Social Requisites of Democracy Revisited," American Sociological Review 59 (1994): 1-22; Stephen Rosenstone and John Hansen, Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America (New York: Macmillan, 1993); Sidney Verba, Norman Nie, and J. Kim, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven-Nation Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

(12.) Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture; Verba, Nie, and Kim, Participation and Political Equality.

(13.) Jacques Thomassen and Jan W. van Deth, "Political Involvement and Democratic Attitudes." In Samuel Barnes and Janos Simon, eds., The Post Communist Citizens (Budapest: Erasmus Foundation, 1998); Michael Bratton, Robert Mattes, and E. Gyimah-Boadi, Learning About Reform: People, Democracy, and Markets in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

(14.) Bratton, Mattes, and Gyimah-Boadi, Learning About Reform, p. 296.

(15.) Robert Putnam, R. Leonardi, and R. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Mitchell Seligson, "Civic Association and Democratic Participation in Central America: A Test of the Putnam Thesis," Comparative Political Studies 32 (1999): 342-362.

(16.) Robert W. Jackman and R. A. Miller, "Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies During the 1980s," Comparative Political Studies 127 (1995): 467-492; Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully, "Introduction: Party Systems in Latin America." In Mainwaring and Scully, eds., Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 1-34.

(17.) Sidney Verba, Kay Schlozman, and Henry Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

(18.) Rosenstone and Hansen, Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America; Verba, Nie, and Kim, Participation and Political Equality.

(19.) See the Appendix; the two dependent variables are four-point scales that sum the answers of three yes/no items. Zero means the respondent did not participate in any political activity, and three means participation in all three. Missing value is treated as a negative answer by assumption.

(20.) The CSES is available at www.cses.org, and we use the April 10, 2006, release. The East Asia Barometer is available at http://eacsurvey.law.ntu.edu.tw/.

(21.) We adopt the definition of internal efficacy proposed by Richard Niemi, Stephen Craig, and Franco Mattei, "Measuring Internal Political Efficacy in the 1988 National Election Study," American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 1407-1413. "Internal efficacy refers to beliefs about one's own competence to understand, and to participate effectively in, politics" (p. 1407). The items we use are also two of the original seven items in their article, with minor modification of phrases.

(22.) The basic specification of the SEM model is the same as an ordinal logistic regression model. The only difference is that we treat Internal Efficacy as an intervening variable to be explained by other independent variables.

(23.) Our analysis also shows relatively weak partisanship in East Asian countries as opposed to Western democracies. The analysis by Emile Sheng in this issue attributes this to the fact that East Asian democracies have had a relatively short time span of electoral and partisan politics. There has not yet been enough time to institutionalize partisanship through mechanisms such as cumulative electoral experiences and parental socialization. See also Russell J. Dalton and Steve Weldon, "Partisanship and Party System Institutionalization," Party Politics 13 (2007): 179-196.

(24.) Electoral participation encompasses having voted in the last election, trying to persuade others how to vote, and participating in campaign activities. See Appendix for additional detail.

(25.) Also see Jeffrey Karp and Susan Banducci, "Party Mobilization and Political Participation in New and Old Democracies," Party Politics 13 (2007): 275-277.

(26.) Nonelectoral participation includes three items: (1) contacting politicians or officials, (2) protest or demonstration, and (3) work with others to share concern.

(27.) Tables 1 and 2 are the results of ordinal regressions for electoral and nonelectoral participation. Each ordinal regression views the model as three separate binary logistic regressions by dichotomizing the (0,1,2,3) ordinal scale into a (0,1) binary scale. For example, threshold (0) combines categories into (0/1,2,3), threshold category (1) into (0,1/2,3), and threshold category (2) into (0,1,2/3). Therefore, the threshold (0) represents "the constant of the binary logistic regression" if we recode the four-point scale into 0 and 1 (1, 2, and 3) and run the binary logistic regression. Threshold (1) means "the constant" if we recode the ordinal dependent variable by category 1 into a binary variable and run the regression. Similar interpretation can apply to threshold (2).

(28.) The expected probability is calculated with a baseline profile for those who are youngest and have the lowest level of religiosity, perception of corruption, and education.

(29.) For a more extensive analysis of citizen activism in Hong Kong see Lain Wai-man, Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong: The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004).

(30.) In Taiwan and Japan, political mobilization at the grassroots level is usually associated with local networks affiliated with traditional religious organizations, especially in the rural areas. See Ken'ichi Ikeda and Sean E. Richey, "Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation," Journal of Political Behavior 27 (2005): 239-260; Tsai Ming-hui and Chang Mau-kueig, "Formation and Transformation of Local P'ai-hsi: A Case Study of Ho-k'ou Town," Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology Academia Sinica 77 (1994): 125-156; Chen Hsiang-shui, "Political Activities in Pinnan Village: A Case Study of a Southern Taiwanese Village," Chinese Studies 17 (1999): 127-155.

(31.) A reasonable speculation for the poor fit of Taiwan and Japan is that there must be some country-specific factors beyond the scope of our model. We believe these factors are related to citizen-initiative contact about personal issues since the two countries for a long time had the same electoral system (single, nontransferable vote) and a very similar party system (one party dominated). Under this system, nonelectoral participation is usually initiated for local or personal purposes and most politicians try to exploit the chances of marketing themselves and demonstrate their political impact to win popular support. This is a key factor of intraparty competition under the one party-dominated system with SNTV rule with multiple party candidates in a district. See Yusaku Horiuchi, Institutions, Incentives and Electoral Participation in Japan: Cross-Level and Cross-National Perspectives (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005).

(32.) Model specification at the individual level of HGLM is exactly the same as ordinal logistic regression. But at country level, two dummy variables are added to the HGLM model, one signifying established democracies and the other Asian emerging democracies (Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Philippines), to verify if the random component shows significant unexplained variance. For the sake of space, we do not report the detailed results of our HGLM models. Only a summary of the findings is reported here. Interested readers are welcome to send us a request for a copy of detailed results. Only twenty-five countries are included in the HGLM model. We excluded Japan, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand because of very high missing values in some variables.

(33.) This finding is based on lack of statistical significance for the contextual variables, specifically two dummy variables, Established Democracy and Asian Democracy, adding to the country-level part of multilevel specification.

(34.) We also ran ordinal logistic regressions for EAB data. Since the results are consistent with the SEM analysis, we only report the latter.

(35.) We add more explanatory variables to the country-specific model one at a time depending on which variable has the largest modification index. We stop adding new variables when the fit statistics pass the acceptable level. We apply the same specification for each country sample, and overfitting may be a potential problem. However, since the aim of our SEM modeling is to explore peculiarity of each country instead of finding a universal structure of causal relationships, we decide to let the data speak for themselves. The acceptable level of the fit statistics is as follows: CFI is greater than or equal to 0.95, TLI is greater than or equal to 0.9, RMSEA is less than 0.06, WRMR is less than 0.9. See Linda K. Muthen and Bengt O. Muthen, Mplus User's Guide: Statistical Analysis with Latent Variables (Los Angeles: Muthen and Muthen, 2001), p. 362.

(36.) Valerie J. Bunce, "The Return of the Left and the Future of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe." In B. Yesilada, ed., Political Parties: Essays in Honor of Samuel Elderseld (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 151-176.

(37.) Russell J. Dalton and Martin E Wattenberg, eds., Parties Without Partisans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 275.

Yun-han Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Science of Academia Sinica and professor of political science at National Taiwan University. He is currently president of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. He specializes in democratization, politics of greater China, and East Asian political economy. He has been the coordinator of Asian Barometer Survey since 2004. Chu is an associate editor of Journal of East Asian Studies and serves on the editorial board of Journal of Democracy, International Studies Quarterly, Pacific Affairs, Journal of Contemporary China, China Review, and China Perspective. Among his recent publications are Crafting Democracy in Taiwan (1992), Consolidating Third-Wave Democracies (1997), China Under Jiang Zemin (2000), and The New Chinese Leadership (2004).

Min-hua Huang is assistant professor of political science at National Taiwan University. His research specializations include theories of international relations, psychometrics, multivariate statistical analysis, political culture, and the history of statistics. He has published in Issue and Studies (in Chinese), Taiwanese Political Science Review, Chinese Political Science Review (in Chinese), Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Journal of Electoral Studies (in Chinese), Journal of Social Science and Philosophy (in Chinese), International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and Soochow Journal of Political Science (in Chinese). Please address correspondence to him at mhhuang5103@ntu.edu.tw.

Table 1 The Factors Related to Electoral Participation

 Hong South
 Japan Kong Korea

Party attachment 0.64 *** 0.44 *** 0.42 ***
 (0.06) (0.11) (0.06)
Belief in democracy 0.33 0.18 -0.12
 (0.25) (0.23) (0.20)
Satisfaction with -- -0.30 * -0.02
 democracy (0.15) (0.10)
Government -- -0.19 0.27 **
 performance (0.17) (0.09)
Corruption -0.34 *** 0.03 0.03
 (0.10) (0.14)
Religiosity 0.22 *** 0.06 --
 (0.04) (0.08)
Income -- -- --

Education 0.21 *** 0.13 0.16 **
 (0.05) (0.07) (0.05)
Gender 0.003 0.17 -0.20
 (0.12) (0.21) (0.12)
Age 0.02 *** -0.001 0.03 ***
 (0.004) (0.00) (0.01)
Threshold (0) 0.77 -1.18 0.95
 (0.71) (0.80) (0.64)
Threshold (1) 5.18 *** 1.90 * 4.04 ***
 (0.73) (0.81) (0.66)
Threshold (2) 6.73 *** 4.43 *** 6.26 ***
 (0.74) (0.88) (0.68)
Pseudo R-square 0.18 0.10 0.12
N 1,596 408 1,221

 Philippines Taiwan

Party attachment 0.47 *** 0.49 ***
 (0.07) (0.05)
Belief in democracy 0.12 0.18
 (0.15) (0.17)
Satisfaction with 0.02 0.001
 democracy (0.09) (0.08)
Government 0.30 ** --
 performance (0.10)
Corruption 0.03 --
 (0.09) (0.08)
Religiosity 0.07 0.22 ***
 (0.07) (0.06)
Income 0.002 --
 (0.05)
Education 0.02 0.18 ***
 (0.05) (0.04)
Gender -0.37 ** 0.04
 (0.13) (0.10)
Age 0.004 0.03 ***
 (0.004) (0.004)
Threshold (0) -0.97 1.70 ***
 (0.57) (0.51)
Threshold (1) 1.95 *** 4.99 ***
 (0.57) (0.52)
Threshold (2) 3.11 *** 6.82 ***
 (0.58) (0.54)
Pseudo R-square 0.09 0.14
N 998 1,581

Source: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, module 2.

Note: Variables not included are represented by a dash. Entries are
unstandardized coefficients from an ordinal multivariate regression
model. Figures in parentheses are standard errors. Significance level:
* indicates p [less than or equal to] 0.05; ** indicates p [less than
or equal to] 0.01; *** indicates p [less than or equal to] 0.001.

Table 2 The Factors Related to Nonelectoral Participation

 Hong South
 Japan Kong Korea

Party attachment 0.72 *** 0.31 ** 0.65 **
 (0.12) (0.12) (0.11)
Belief in democracy -0.52 0.49 -0.54
 (0.38) (0.29) (0.35)
Satisfaction with -- -0.51 * -0.44 *
 democracy (0.18) (0.18)
Government -- -0.50 * 0.65 ***
 performance (0.20) (0.17)
Corruption -0.03 0.15 0.46 *
 (0.17) (0.16) (0.19)
Religiosity 0.18 ** -0.05 --
 (0.07) (0.09) (0.07)
Income -- -- --

Education 0.05 0.31 *** 0.24 *
 (0.08) (0.08) (0.10)
Gender -0.65 ** 0.08 -0.74 ***
 (0.21) (0.25) (0.23)
Age 0.00 0.00 -0.02
 (0.01) (0.00) (0.01)
Threshold (0) 2.43 1.25 3.85 **
 (1.17) (0.93) (1.23)
Threshold (1) 3.65 ** 3.09 *** 4.90 ***
 (1.18) (0.95) (1.24)
Threshold (2) 5.15 *** 4.56 *** 6.34 ***
 (1.22) (1.00) (1.27)
Pseudo R-square 0.09 0.16 0.14
N 1,596 408 1,221

 Philippines Taiwan

Party attachment 0.52 *** 0.36 ***
 (0.07) (0.06)
Belief in democracy -0.16 -0.25
 (0.16) (0.23)
Satisfaction with -0.18 -0.13
 democracy (0.10) (0.12)
Government 0.27 * --
 performance (0.11)
Corruption -0.14 --
 (0.08)
Religiosity 0.12 0.21 **
 (0.08)
Income -0.013 --
 -0.05
Education 0.10 * 0.28 ***
 (0.05) (0.07)
Gender -0.56 *** -0.55 ***
 (0.14) (0.15)
Age -0.002 0.01
 (0.01) (0.01)
Threshold (0) 0.17 2.87 ***
 (0.61) (0.72)
Threshold (1) 1.84 ** 4.26 ***
 (0.61) (0.73)
Threshold (2) 4.00 *** 6.21 ***
 (0.66) (0.78)
Pseudo R-square 0.11 0.08
N 998 1,581

Source: Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, module 2.

Note: Variables not included are represented by a dash. Entries are
unstandardized coefficients from an ordinal multivariate regression
model. Figures in parentheses are standard errors. Significance
level: * indicates p [less than or equal to] 0.05; ** indicates
p [less than or equal to] 0.01; *** indicates p [less than or equal
to] 0.001.

Table 3 A Structural Equation Analysis of Electoral Participation

 Japan Hong Kong

Predictors of electoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.21 (0.04) *** 0.30 (0.06) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.07 (0.03) ** 0.08 (0.08)
 Social capital-- 0.15 (0.04) *** 0.35 (0.10) ***
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.23 (0.09) ** -0.02 (0.12)
 Belief in democracy 0.08 (0.10) -0.14 (0.11)
 Satisfaction with -0.11 (0.06) -0.05 (0.10)
 democracy
 Government -0.01 (0.05) -0.14 (0.09)
 performance
 Corruption -0.01 (0.06) --
 Religiosity 0.06 (0.03) * --
 Income -- 0.04 (0.05)
 Education 0.05 (0.04) 0.10 (0.05)
 Gender -0.06 (0.08) 0.25 (0.12) *
 Age 0.02 (0.003) *** 0.02 (0.01) ***
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.22 (0.05) *** 0.07 (0.04)
 Education 0.18 (0.04) *** 0.11 (0.03) ***
 Gender -0.43 (0.09) *** -0.15 (0.06) *
 Age 0.003 (0.003) -0.003 (0.002)
 Satisfaction with -0.14 (0.07) * --
 democracy
 Government -- --
 performance
 Social capital-- -- --
 membership
 Income -- --
 Belief in democracy -- --
 Religiosity -- --
 Social capital--trust -- --
Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 0.98 (0.96) 1.00
 Tucker-Lewis Index 0.93 (0.88) 1.08
 Root mean square 0.03 (0.03) 0.00
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.63 (0.76) 0.44
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 908 502

 South Korea Philippines

Predictors of electoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.31 (0.04) *** 0.24 (0.03) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.06 (0.03) * -0.01 (0.02)
 Social capital-- 0.33 (0.08) *** 0.15 (0.04) ***
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.18 (0.07) * -0.19 (0.12)
 Belief in democracy 0.05 (0.07) 0.06 (0.07)
 Satisfaction with 0.002 (0.07) -0.03 (0.04)
 democracy
 Government -0.15 (0.06) ** 0.05 (0.04)
 performance
 Corruption 0.04 (0.05) 0.06 (0.04)
 Religiosity -- 0.02 (0.03)
 Income -0.002 (0.04) -0.14 (0.04) ***
 Education 0.10 (0.03) ** 0.08 (0.03) **
 Gender 0.08 (0.07) -0.03 (0.07)
 Age 0.03 (0.003) *** 0.02 (0.002) ***
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.03 (0.04) 0.06 (0.04)
 Education 0.07 (0.03) -0.08 (0.03) **
 Gender -0.22 (0.07) ** -0.38 (0.08) ***
 Age -0.003 (0.003) -0.01 (0.003) **
 Satisfaction with -- --
 democracy
 Government 0.12 (0.05) * --
 performance
 Social capital-- -- 0.17 (0.05) ***
 membership
 Income -- --
 Belief in democracy -- --
 Religiosity -- --
 Social capital--trust -- --
Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 1.00 (0.98) 1.00 (0.93)
 Tucker-Lewis Index 1.00 (0.93) 1.00 (0.78)
 Root mean square 0.01 (0.02) 0.01 (0.04)
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.51 (0.68) 0.51 (0.88)
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 1,193 1,157

 Taiwan Thailand

Predictors of electoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.39 (0.04) *** 0.31 (0.04) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.06 (0.04) 0.13 (0.03) ***
 Social capital-- 0.11 (0.04) ** 0.18 (0.03) ***
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.12 (0.08) 0.10 (0.08)
 Belief in democracy -0.06 (0.07) -0.12 (0.08)
 Satisfaction with -0.03 (0.06) 0.04 (0.08)
 democracy
 Government -0.02 (0.05) -0.003 (0.05)
 performance
 Corruption -- 0.03 (0.04)
 Religiosity 0.06 (0.03) * 0.05 (0.03) *
 Income 0.14 (0.03) *** -0.05 (0.03)
 Education -0.01 (0.03) -0.01 (0.03)
 Gender 0.05 (0.08) -0.08 (0.06)
 Age 0.01 (0.003) ** -0.001 (0.002)
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.05 (0.03) 0.13 (0.03) ***
 Education 0.11 (0.03) *** 0.05 (0.02) *
 Gender -0.33 (0.06) *** -0.09 (0.05)
 Age -0.004 (0.003) -0.002 (0.002)
 Satisfaction with -- --
 democracy
 Government -- --
 performance
 Social capital-- 0.13 (0.04) *** --
 membership
 Income 0.09 (0.03) *** --
 Belief in democracy 0.18 (0.06) ** --
 Religiosity -- 0.11 (0.03) ***
 Social capital--trust -- 0.20 (0.07) **
Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 1.00 (0.86) 0.99 (0.86)
 Tucker-Lewis Index 1.09 (0.59) 0.96 (0.56)
 Root mean square 0.00 (0.06) 0.01 (0.05)
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.16 (1.20) 0.55 (1.15)
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 1,028 1,450

 Mongolia

Predictors of electoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.23 (0.04) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.11 (0.03) ***
 Social capital- 0.13 (0.03) ***
 membership
 Social capital-trust 0.13 (0.11)
 Belief in democracy 0.12 (0.07)
 Satisfaction with 0.05 (0.05)
 democracy
 Government -0.10 (0.04) *
 performance
 Corruption 0.01 (0.04)
 Religiosity -0.01 (0.02)
 Income 0.003 (0.02)
 Education -0.05 (0.02)
 Gender -0.06 (0.07)
 Age --
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.15 (0.05) **
 Education 0.17 (0.05) ***
 Gender -0.24 (0.09) **
 Age --
 Satisfaction with -0.13 (0.06) *
 democracy
 Government --
 performance
 Social capital-- 0.08 (0.04) *
 membership
 Income --
 Belief in democracy --
 Religiosity --
 Social capital--trust --
Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 1.00 (0.93)
 Tucker-Lewis Index 1.01 (0.81)
 Root mean square 0.00 (0.03)
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.49 (0.80)
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 1,001

Source: East Asia Barometer. Program: Mplus 2.13.

Note: Variables not included are represented by a dash. Entries are
unstandardized coefficients from a structural equation model (SEM).
Figures in parentheses are standard errors, except those in the
heading of "Fit statistics," which mean the fit statistics before
modification. Significance level: * indicates p [less than or equal
to] 0.05; ** indicates p [less than or equal to] 0.01; *** indicates
p [less than or equal to] 0.001.

Table 4 A Structural Equation Analysis of Nonelectoral Participation

 Japan Hong Kong

Predictors of nonelectoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.19 (0.06) *** 0.35 (0.07) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.12 (0.03) *** 0.12 (0.09)
 Social capital-- 0.30 (0.05) *** 0.19 (0.12)
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.07 (0.12) 0.01 (0.13)
 Belief in democracy -0.18 (0.14) -0.14 (0.13)
 Satisfaction with -0.11 (0.09) -0.17 (0.10)
 democracy
 Government -0.04 (0.07) 0.01 (0.11)
 performance
 Corruption 0.07 (0.09) --
 Religiosity 0.02 (0.03) --
 Income -- 0.05 (0.06)
 Education 0.09 (0.05) 0.07 (0.06)
 Gender -0.23 (0.12) -0.22 (0.12)
 Age 0.01 (0.01) * -0.01 (0.01)
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.22 (0.05) *** 0.07 (0.04)
 Education 0.18 (0.04) *** 0.11 (0.03) ***
 Gender -0.42 (0.09) *** -0.15 (0.06) *
 Age 0.003 (0.003) -0.003 (0.002)
 Satisfaction with -0.14 (0.07) * --
 democracy
 Government -- --
 performance
 Social capital-- -- --
 membership
 Income -- --
 Belief in democracy -- --
 Religiosity -- --
 Social capital--trust -- --
 Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 0.97 (0.94) 1.00
 Tucker-Lewis Index 0.90 (0.84) 1.11
 Root mean square 0.03 (0.03) 0.00
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.63 (0.76) 0.44
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 908 502

 South Korea Philippines

Predictors of nonelectoral
participation
 Party attachment -0.02 (0.04) 0.25 (0.04) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.17 (0.03) *** 0.03 (0.03)
 Social capital-- 0.13 (0.09) 0.20 (0.05) ***
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.11 (0.07) 0.18 (0.14)
 Belief in democracy 0.01 (0.07) -0.01 (0.09)
 Satisfaction with -0.01 (0.07) -0.002 (0.05)
 democracy
 Government 0.02 (0.06) -0.09 (0.05)
 performance
 Corruption -0.01 (0.06) -0.04 (0.05)
 Religiosity -- 0.04 (0.04)
 Income 0.06 (0.04) -0.09 (0.05) *
 Education 0.07 (0.04) 0.05 (0.03)
 Gender 0.04 (0.07) -0.18 (0.09) *
 Age -0.001 (0.003) 0.002 (0.003)
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.03 (0.04) 0.06 (0.04)
 Education 0.07 (0.03) -0.08 (0.03) **
 Gender -0.22 (0.07) ** -0.37 (0.08) ***
 Age -0.003 (0.002) -0.01 (0.003) **
 Satisfaction with -- --
 democracy

 Government 0.12 (0.05) * --
 performance
 Social capital-- -- 0.17 (0.05) ***
 membership
 Income -- --
 Belief in democracy -- --
 Religiosity -- --
 Social capital--trust -- --
 Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 0.99 (0.90) 1.00 (0.89)
 Tucker-Lewis Index 0.98 (0.72) 1.00 (0.67)
 Root mean square 0.01 (0.02) 0.00 (0.04)
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.51 (0.68) 0.51 (0.88)
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 1,193 1,157

 Taiwan Thailand

Predictors of nonelectoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.05 (0.05) 0.31 (0.04) ***
 Internal efficacy 0.12 (0.05) ** 0.10 (0.03) ***
 Social capital-- 0.33 (0.05) *** 0.12 (0.04) **
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.10 (0.09) 0.13 (0.09)
 Belief in democracy -0.21 (0.09) * -0.14 (0.09)
 Satisfaction with -0.14 (0.07) * 0.04 (0.05)
 democracy
 Government 0.05 (0.07) -0.09 (0.05)
 performance
 Corruption -- 0.05 (0.05)
 Religiosity 0.06 (0.04) 0.06 (0.03) *
 Income 0.03 (0.04) 0.05 (0.03)
 Education 0.02 (0.05) 0.08 (0.03) **
 Gender -0.17 (0.09) -0.25 (0.06) ***
 Age -0.003 (0.004) -0.002 (0.002)
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.05 (0.03) 0.14 (0.03) ***
 Education 0.11 (0.03) *** 0.05 (0.02) *
 Gender -0.33 (0.06) *** -0.10 (0.05)
 Age -0.004 (0.0) -0.002 (0.002)
 Satisfaction with -- --
 democracy
 Government -- --
 performance
 Social capital-- 0.13 (0.04) *** --
 membership
 Income 0.09 (0.03) *** --
 Belief in democracy 0.18 (0.06) ** --
 Religiosity 0.11 (0.03) ***
 Social capital--trust -- 0.20 (0.07) **
 Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 1.00 (0.76) 0.99 (0.85)
 Tucker-Lewis Index 1.15 (0.32) 0.96 (0.53)
 Root mean square 0.00 (0.06) 0.01 (0.05)
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.16 (1.20) 0.55 (1.15)
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 1,028 1,450

 Mongolia

Predictors of nonelectoral
participation
 Party attachment 0.13 (0.06) *
 Internal efficacy 0.03 (0.03)
 Social capital-- 0.14 (0.04) ***
 membership
 Social capital--trust 0.03 (0.14)
 Belief in democracy 0.09 (0.09)
 Satisfaction with 0.05 (0.07)
 democracy
 Government 0.06 (0.06)
 performance
 Corruption -0.001 (0.0)
 Religiosity 0.04 (0.0)
 Income 0.12 (0.03) ***
 Education -0.13 (0.05) *
 Gender -0.08 (0.10)
 Age --
Predictors of internal
efficacy
 Party attachment 0.15 (0.05) **
 Education 0.17 (0.05) ***
 Gender -0.24 (0.09) **
 Age --
 Satisfaction with -0.13 (0.06) *
 democracy
 Government --
 performance
 Social capital-- 0.08 (0.04) *
 membership
 Income --
 Belief in democracy --
 Religiosity --
 Social capital--trust --
 Fit statistics
 Comparative Fit Index 1.00 (0.88)
 Tucker-Lewis Index 1.02 (0.69)
 Root mean square 0.00 (0.03)
 error of
 approximation
 (RMSEA)
 Weighted root mean 0.49 (0.80)
 square residual
 (WRMR)
N 1,001

Source: East Asia Barometer. Program: Mplus 2.13.

Note: Variables standard not included are represented by a dash.
Entries are unstandardized coefficients from a structural equation
model (SEM). Figures in parentheses are standard errors, except those
in the heading of "Fit statistics," which mean the fit statistics
before modification. Significance level: * indicates p [less than or
equal to] 0.05; ** indicates p [less than or equal to] 0.01;
*** indicates p [less than or equal to] 0.001.