Reexamining confucianism and democratic support: a guardianship perspective

This article engages with and advances recent scholarship that applies Robert Dahl’s concept of guardianship to the study of Confucian political culture. We show that existing applications of Dahl’s framework suffer from conceptual ambiguity and imprecise measurement. We refine the concept of Confucian guardianship and its operationalization, and reexamine its relationship to democratic support in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Drawing on Dahl, we conceptualize Confucian guardianship as comprising two distinct components: intellectual elitism and virtuous leadership. We argue that these components affect democratic support through different mechanisms. Intellectual elitism reduces support for elections, while virtuous leadership weakens support for checks and balances. Using Asian Barometer Survey data, we find that results from China and Taiwan largely align with these expectations. In contrast, findings from Hong Kong are mixed, likely reflecting the political volatility of the 2010s. Guardianship is not unique to Confucian contexts but has long been a rival to democracy. By refining its conceptualization and measurement, this study contributes to comparative research on tensions between guardianship and democracy.