An Oaxaca-decomposition analysis of popular support for democracy in Southeast Asian countries: are the middle classes different from the rest?

Joseph Capuno

Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, 2016, vol. 21, issue 4, 467-488

Abstract: Recent decades witnessed economic and political developments in Asia, especially in the Southeast Asia region, that warrant a re-examination of popular support for democracy among socioeconomic classes in the region. Using the 2010--2012 round of the Asian Barometer Survey, we constructed seven indicators of support for democracy and three socioeconomic classes for Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The tests of proportions indicate that for each country, a high percentage of each class generally expresses support for democracy. Where inter-class differences are significant, the Oaxaca decompositions reveal that in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand these are largely due to dissimilarities in class characteristics (like average education). In Indonesia and the Philippines, the differences in average class characteristics matter less than the heterogeneous effects of the characteristics. Thus, democratic consensus among socioeconomic classes can be promoted through policies that promote class parity in, say, educational attainment or employment status, but more directly in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand than in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1080/13547860.2016.1201970

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