About Me
Hello! I am an associate research fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS), Taiwan.
My research focuses on comparative and international political economy, comparative authoritarianism, and Chinese politics. I am particularly interested in the economic statecraft and media politics in dictatorships. You can find my published works here.
I received my B.A. from National Chengchi University, M.A. from National Chengchi University (NCCU) and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and Ph.D. from Michigan State University. Before joining the IPSAS, I was a postdoctoral fellow of the Asian Barometer Survey co-hosted by the IPSAS and National Taiwan University. During the 2019-20 academic year, I was a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University. I am currently the coordinator of Institute of Social Sciences Methodology. I am also the executive editor of Chinese Political Science Review.
I can be reached at wenchinwu[at]sinica.edu.tw. Here is my CV.
中文自介
您好，歡迎來到我的個人網頁！
我是中央研究院政治學研究所副研究員。我的研究領域涵蓋比較政治經濟學、國際政治經濟學、比較威權主義、以及中國研究。我特別關注威權國家的經濟政略與媒體政治。您可以點此連結閱讀我在這些議題的相關研究。
我畢業於政治大學新聞學系與政治學研究所、比利時魯汶大學歐洲政治與政策碩士學程、並在美國密西根州立大學取得政治學博士學位。我曾於中央研究院與臺灣大學共同執行之「亞洲民主動態調查」計畫擔任博士後研究員，以及在2019-2020年間，於哈佛大學燕京學社擔任訪問學者。我目前則擔任「社會科學計量方法研習營」的計畫主持人，也是《政治學報》的執行編輯。
我的電子郵件信箱是 wenchinwu[at]sinica.edu.tw，若您要查閱我的中文履歷，請按此。
Research
Wu, Wen-Chin. Forthcoming. “Distributive Unfairness, National Pride, and Willingness to Fight: Evidence from Taiwan.” Journal of Asian and African Studies.
How does income distribution affect citizens’ willingness to defend their country? In this article, I argue that perceived unfair income distribution reduces citizens’ attachment to their country and inhibits their willingness to fight. Using mediation analysis with data collected by the World Values Survey in Taiwan in 2019, I find that perceived distributive unfairness reduces non-rich citizens’ willingness to fight for their country via dampening their national pride, a key element in psychological attachment to national identity. This finding suggests that distributive unfairness threatens national security and contributes to the literature on the perils of economic inequality..
Since 2016, China has been conducting military flybys around Taiwan, while the US has approved arms sales to Taiwan on several occasions and sent warplanes and battleships through the Taiwan Strait. How does Taiwanese public opinion respond to the Chinese and US military presence in the Strait? Is the public likely to become less supportive of \emph{de jure} independence for Taiwan on account of China’s military deterrence or more supportive owing to a perceived likelihood of US military assistance? In this report, we provide answers to these questions based on evidence from a survey experiment conducted in Taiwan in October–November 2020. We find that Taiwanese are less sensitive to the Chinese military presence in the Taiwan Strait but have become more supportive of de jure independence after seeing the US aircraft in the area. Our findings contribute to studies of cross-Strait relations and US foreign policy on the Taiwan Strait.
自從2016起，中國開始於臺灣附近進行戰機巡航，同時間美國批准多項對台軍售案並派遣軍機與軍艦通過臺灣海峽。對於中國和美國在臺灣海峽的軍事現蹤，臺灣民意又是如何反應呢？ 臺灣民眾會因為中國的軍嚇阻而變得更不支持臺灣的法理獨立嗎？抑或會因為認為美國採取軍事手段支持臺灣的可能性上升，而更為支持台獨？我們基於一項於2020年十月至十一月間在臺灣所進行的實驗性民調，在本文針對前述問題提出解答。我們發現臺灣民眾對於中國在臺灣海峽軍事現蹤的反應比較不敏感，但是他們在看到美國於該區的軍事蹤跡時，變成更為支持臺灣的法理獨立。這些發現對於兩岸關係、以及美國對臺灣的外交政策等研究領域有所貢獻。
Taiwan's opposition to PRC demands such as acceptance of the ‘92 Consensus’ and ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula since 2016 has invited a series of retaliatory measures from Beijing, designed to coerce Taiwan into compliance. Given the stark asymmetry in economic size, military capability, and diplomatic status, Taiwan provides a case for studying coercive diplomacy that takes the form of threats to punish. Material differences suggest that Taiwan should capitulate, and ‘cheap talk’ theses expect PRC threats to have no discernible effect, while balance of threat arguments expect resolve. In this article, we use the survey data collected in the 2016, 2019, and 2020 rounds of the Taiwan National Security Study to examine how Taiwanese respond to China's intensifying and expanding threats. Our paper identifies four strategies that the public sees as responses to PRC coercion: isolation, bandwagon with China, balance against China by allying with the USA and Japan, and hedge by deepening economic ties with China while aligning with the USA and Japan against China. We show that the popular support for balancing against China rises as PRC coercion grows and Taiwanese citizens increasingly perceive China to be a threat. Our findings imply that citizens in a liberal democracy can develop the will to pushback against pressure from an authoritarian regime despite sharp asymmetries in capabilities and material limitations..
Who is more influential in shaping citizens' health-related behaviors, experts or politicians? We conduct five conjoint experiments on 6,255 residents of France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, asking them to evaluate COVID-19 vaccines alongside randomly varying endorsements from national politicians and medical professionals. In every country, our results show that citizens are more likely to rely on medical professionals, the experts, more than on politicians when choosing a COVID-19 vaccine. Even after accounting for citizens' political alignment with the government, our evidence reveals that politicians play a very limited role in shaping vaccine acceptance. These results have implications for the role of political elites in shaping people's behaviors amid a large-scale crisis.
This paper aims to answer a general question: whether an international organization (IO) is able to shape public opinion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic took hold in early 2020, countries across the globe have switched gear from prevention to vaccination. Most had to not only secure a sufficient supply of vaccines, but also to curb vaccine hesitancy among their populations. Can endorsement by an international organization like the World Health Organization (WHO) enhance a vaccine’s acceptability? Based on a survey experiment conducted in Taiwan, our study leverages the special relationship between China and Taiwan to show that WHO endorsement can induce acceptance of Chinese vaccines among Taiwanese people. However, the effect is found to be contextual in the sense that it only works when people’s trust in the WHO is higher than their trust in the vaccine’s country of origin. Our study not only contributes to the literature of IO legitimacy by empirically showing IOs’ causal effects on public opinion, but also sheds light on how a vaccine’s credibility can be enhanced to promote vaccination uptake.
Conventional wisdom posits that democracies have more social welfare expenditure than dictatorships because electoral competition induces democratic leaders to adopt social policies in exchange for ordinary citizens’ political support. However, as elections are absent, unfree, and/or unfair in autocracies, the research question in this paper is: How does the distribution of power between dictators and their allies influence welfare spending? This paper discusses the power-sharing structure’s impact on welfare spending based on the theory of power-sharing in authoritarian regimes. When power is less personalized, dictators face the risk of being replaced by other elites. We argue that dictators allocate resources to citizens through welfare policies in exchange for their political support. Increasing personalism rules will reduce welfare spending when power is concentrated on dictators. We test our arguments using time-series cross-sectional data for 90 dictatorships from 1961 to 2006. We find that total welfare spending decreases as the personalization of power of the dictator increases. This effect is robust to different model specifications. This finding helps us to understand the connection between the personalization of power and welfare spending in dictatorships. This paper contributes to the literature by showing that welfare spending is determined by regime leaders’ need for public support as the conventional wisdom suggests, and by the power dynamics within their ruling coalitions in dictatorships..
傳統觀點認為，因為選舉競爭促使民主國家領導人採取社會政策以爭取公民政治支持，所以民主國家比獨裁國家具有更多福利支出。然而，由於獨裁國家沒有選舉、或其選舉並不自由和／或不公平，因此本文的研究問題是：獨裁者與其盟友之間的權力分布如何影響福利支出？本文基於晚近發展的權力分享理論，討論權力分享結構對於威權國家福利支出的影響。當權力個人化統治程度較低，獨裁者面臨被其他精英取代的風險。我們認為，獨裁者藉由福利政策向公民分配資源，換取公民政治支持。當權力更集中於獨裁者，增加權力個人化統治將減少福利支出。本文使用1961年至2006年90個獨裁國家時間序列橫斷面資料檢驗我們論點。我們發現，總福利支出隨著獨裁者權力個人化統治的增加而減少。這種影響在不同模型設定中皆相當穩健。此一發現有助於理解獨裁國家權力個人化統治與福利支出間的聯繫。本文貢獻在於指出福利支出不僅由文獻認為的政權領導人需要公眾支持所決定，在獨裁國家中也是由其統治聯盟內部權力分布所決定。
What types of vaccines are citizens most likely to accept? We argue that citizens' identification with their nation may lead them to prefer vaccines developed and produced within their national borders, to the exclusion and/or detriment of vaccines from other nations. We administered a conjoint experiment requesting 15,000 adult citizens across 14 individual countries from around the world to assess 450,000 profiles of vaccines that randomly varied on seven attributes. Beyond vaccine fundamentals such as efficacy rate, number of doses, and duration of the protection, we find that citizens systematically favor vaccines developed and produced in their own country of residence. The extent of preference in favor of vaccines developed and produced within the national borders is particularly large among citizens who identify more strongly with their nation, suggesting nationalism plays a role in explaining the bias in favor of vaccines developed and produced locally. This public opinion bias on vaccine preferences has significant theoretical and practical implications.
Diplomatic protests convey one government’s displeasure with the policies of another government. Yet public support for their own government’s policies can be influenced by the actions of others, so diplomatic protests have the potential to increase domestic support for the policy within the target country. A rally-’round-the-flag effect has been found to be associated with wars, crises, and sanctions. Here, we assess the existence of such an effect in relation to diplomatic protests by foreign governments. Using a survey experiment, we assess the impact of foreign government protests—specifically protests by China—against U.S. arms sales to Taiwan on public support for Taiwan’s government and its policies. We find that who lodges the protest, whether it is an adversary or supporter, is more important than the language of the protest itself. We argue that diplomatic protests create a dilemma—lodging complaints about the behavior of other governments can increase public support for those very policies in the target country.
This paper examines the logic of human capital formation in authoritarian regimes based on theories of inequality and regime transition and the prospect of upward mobility model. Our central argument is that by investing in human capital, dictators can boost citizens’ perceived levels of social mobility. Consequently, dictators can preemptively ameliorate the pressure for redistribution from the poor and neutralize threats from the masses. In other words, dictators invest in human capital as a way of increasing citizens’ perceived social mobility and thus sustaining political stability in their authoritarian regimes. Our cross-national analysis covers more than 80 authoritarian regimes from 1970 to 2010 and shows that higher levels of education spending are associated with a lower probability of regime breakdown in autocracies. We further use a causal mediation analysis with the Asian Barometer Survey data and connect our causal link from human capital formation to perceived social mobility and then to authoritarian regime support.
This article investigates the relationship between elite power sharing and media freedom in dictatorships. While conventional wisdom posits that dictators have a strong incentive to control the media, they also need information to sustain their authoritarian rule. In this article, we argue that dictators need to allow for a higher level of media freedom when sharing more power with other elites. Specifically, dictators create transparency through media freedom to induce trust and cooperation among elites within the regime. We confirm the hypothesis by analyzing data from 98 dictatorships from 1960 to 2010. Our finding is robust to different model specifications. This article contributes to the literature by showing that authoritarian media freedom is determined by not only dictators' need for local information as the conventional wisdom suggests, but also the power dynamics within their ruling coalitions.
Wu, Wen-Chin Wu. 2022. “Partisanship, Ideology, Constituent Economic Interest, and Trade Politics in American Congress: The Case of the TPP.” EurAmerica . 52(1): 1-41. (In Chinese)
Previous studies have shown that trade politics in the US Congress is determined by congressional partisanship, ideology, and constitu-ents’ economic interests. In this article, I utilize the case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the theoretical perspective of the litera-ture on China’s trade shock to investigate how these three factors af-fected US congressional representatives’ support for the TPP in 2015. Based on the results of quantitative analysis, this article finds that con-gressional support for the TPP was determined by partisanship, ideol-ogy, and their electoral district’s trade with China. Specifically, Repub-lican and conservative congressional representatives were more likely to support the TPP than Democrats and liberals. Districts importing more from China were more likely to support the TPP. These findings enrich our understanding of trade politics in the US Congress in the age of US-China competition.
美國國會的貿易政治向來受到議員的黨派立場、意識形態，以及選區的經濟利益所影響。本文以「跨太平洋夥伴協定」為分析對象，並援引學界針對「中國貿易衝擊」的理論視角，探討上述因素如何影響美國國會議員針對TPP相關法案的投票。本文透過實證分析，發現共和黨籍議員、意識形態越趨右派 (保守派) 之議員，以及選區面臨更多中國進口品競爭之議員，越傾向投票支持美國參與TPP。這些發現有助於我們理解中美競爭的國際架構下，美國國會貿易政治的新面貌。
This paper evaluates the progress and impact of the literature on comparative authoritarianism, showing not only how its development over the previous two decades can help us understand China’s authoritarian politics better, but also how the latter can move the former forward. We focus on two important topic areas in the literature: authoritarian power-sharing and autocratic politics of information (e.g., partial media freedom and government censorship). For the first topic, we shall review the literature on the authoritarian power-sharing between dictators and their allies and explicate how this conceptual innovation helps us understand the institutional foundation of China’s regime stability and phenomenal economic performance before Xi Jinping. The analysis then provides us a baseline for assessing China’s economic and political future under Xi Jinping given his clear departure from the pre-existing power-sharing framework. Finally, this paper also assesses the relevance of the literature on authoritarian politics of information to the Chinese context. In sum, we not only emphasize the conceptual contributions of the literature of comparative authoritarianism to the field of Chinese politics, but also identify lacunae in the current literature and avenues for future research that post-Xi political developments have made visible to us.
During the outbreak of an epidemic, the success in risk communications to make the public comply with disease preventive measures depends on the public's trust in the government. In this study, we aim to understand how media audiences update their trust in the government during the COVID-19 outbreak depending on the information they received. We conducted an online survey experiment in February 2020 in Hong Kong (n= 1,016) in which respondents were randomly provided with a government press release and an endorsement either from an official or a non-official source. This study shows that the information from a non-official source enhances the credibility of official government messages. Our findings imply that dictators can actually "borrow credibility" from their citizen journalists and even nondemocratic leaders can make themselves more trustworthy to potential dissenters through citizen journalism. Allowing information flow from non-official sources can be a practical measure for governments to address the problem of a credibility deficit during a pandemic.
Conventional wisdom posits that intergenerational social mobility reduces individual preference for redistribution. Yet, this thesis is drawn from the case of democracies, where electoral competition plays a key role in redistribution. In this study, we argue that intergenerational social mobility’s effect on individual preference for redistribution differs in dictatorships, where the state is the key decision-maker of redistribution. With the data of the fourth wave of the Asian Barometer Survey, we find that citizens’ upward intergenerational social mobility increases with their support for government-led redistribution in autocracies. This finding contributes to the understanding of individual preference for redistribution in dictatorships.
We seek to investigate the impact of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on coups d’état. We argue that signing PTAs lowers the risk of coups because it acts as a credible commitment of signatory countries to pursuing long‐term economic benefits, which further reduces potential challengers’ incentives to initiate coups. In addition, the effect of PTAs is larger in democracies because democratic signatories are perceived to be more credible in upholding treaty commitments than their authoritarian counterparts. We employ binary time‐series cross‐sectional (BTSCS) models to examine a sample of 154 countries between 1960 and 2012. We find that signing PTAs reduces risks of coups, especially in countries with higher levels of democratic development. Our study sheds light on how PTAs can prolong leader survival through reducing the likelihood of coups and contributes to emerging studies on the consequences of signing PTAs in the age of economic globalization.
Recent studies find that single-party dictatorships are more open to trade due to their larger coalitions than other types of dictatorships. However, this line of research assumes that the preference for trade policies is homogeneous among members of the coalition. This assumption means existing studies fail to explain why single-party dictatorships have more dispersed and complex tariffs rates, an alternative form of protectionism. In this article, I argue that the heterogeneous preferences for free trade among social groups lead to tariff complexity under dictatorships with large coalitions. When dictators need to build larger coalitions, they do not need to exclude all special interest groups but to respond to heterogeneous demands of trade policies in a more selective way. Thus, politicians under single-party dictatorships are more likely to set ad hoc tariffs to favor different members in their coalitions, resulting in complex tariff schedules.
Recent studies revisit the debate over whether tourism promotes peace via intergroup contacts. In this article, we examine the case of China-Taiwan confrontation and argue that the increase of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan contributes to peace across the Taiwan Strait. Specifically, the touristic experiences and interactions with Taiwanese improve Chinese people’s understanding of Taiwan, fostering a patient and peaceful attitude toward the prospect of cross-Strait relations. With the survey data collected during July and September 2013, we find that Chinese people who were visiting Taiwan for the first time were less likely to support a rapid pace to the unification between China and Taiwan or unification by force than those who had never visited Taiwan. Additionally, the attitude is stronger among independent tourists than those who came in escorted tour groups. Our findings suggest that contacts between tourists and locals are effective in alleviating political tension across the Taiwan Strait.
Concern about rising economic inequality is widespread among ordinary citizens, academics, and policymakers. In particular, income inequality not only intensifies the conflicts between the rich and poor citizens but also leads to political instability. In this article, we investigate how income inequality is related to people’s support for democracy by including both objective and subjective measures of inequality. Using data collected from 28 democracies in East Asia and Latin America during 2013 and 2015, we demonstrate that inequality, measured in either a subjective or objective way, decreases with people’s satisfaction with democracy. In addition, we find that in East Asian countries, subjective measures of inequality, perceived unfairness of income inequality in particular, provide a better explanation of people’s dissatisfaction with democracy than the Gini index, a commonly used objective measure of inequality. Our findings are robust to different model specifications and offer micro-level evidence suggesting that unfair income distribution undermines the consolidation of democracies.
While previous studies find that individual preferences for trade policies are shaped by economic and non-economic factors, it is still unclear whether people’s perception of their government’s role in citizens’ lives affects their attitudes toward free trade. In view of the “developmental state” legacy in East Asia, I investigate how the “big government sentiment” in East Asians’ mindset is associated with their support for protectionism. Based on the data of the third-wave Asian Barometer Survey conducted during 2010 and 2012, I find that when people think that government should bear a major responsibility for the wellbeing of its people, they are more supportive of protectionist policies. This finding contributes to studies of East Asian political economy as well as the formation of individual trade policy preference.
While many studies have investigated Taiwanese people’s attitudes towards cross-Strait relations, few studies explore how Chinese people on the other side of the Taiwan Strait perceive the Taiwan issue. Using data collected via a telephone survey that covers 2,000 respondents from ten major cities in China in 2013, this article presents empirical evidence to fill this gap. It finds that most Chinese citizens’ attitudes are aligned with the government’s propaganda on cross-Strait relations. In particular, Chinese citizens have inaccurate perceptions of Taiwanese support for reunification with China. This article also finds that when Chinese respondents think that the city in which they live is more economically advanced than Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, they would support: (1) a faster pace towards a resolution, and (2) the use of military force to resolve cross-Strait confrontations. These findings offer new perspectives on studies of cross-Strait relations and Chinese nationalism.
Many surveys show that China’s political regime, under the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rules, enjoys a high level of public support. However, it is still uncertain whether China’s emerging middle class will become the “agent of democratization” as suggested by modernization theory. Using the data of Asian Barometer Survey conducted in China in 2011, this article demonstrates that the relationship between class identity and preference for liberal democracy in China may be inverted U-shaped. The Chinese middle class shows a higher preference to features of liberal democratic regimes than its counterparts of the lower- and upper-class. Members of the Chinese middle class also tend to regard democracy as the best form of government. Thus, the middle class has the potential to initiate democratization in China if the Chinese government fails to keep satisfying the middle class’ quest for economic well-being and protection of property rights.
This paper investigates the political and economic consequences of signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in authoritarian countries. Based on the Heckscher–Ohlin model of international trade and theories of inequality and regime transition, this paper argues that dictators sign PTAs as a means of consolidating their authoritarian rule. Specifically, PTAs help dictators reduce economic inequality by enriching poor laborers and thereby attenuating the threat of regime collapse. We support our theory with the data from seventy-odd authoritarian regimes from 1960 to 2006, and contribute to ongoing debates about the effects of both income inequality and economic globalization on autocratic resilience.
This paper investigates how authoritarian leaders employ trade openness as a response to rising inequality. Based on the Heckscher–Ohlin model of international trade and models of democratic transition, I argue that unskilled laborers in authoritarian regimes can benefit from engaging in international trade, thus becoming more compliant to the authoritarian rules as their countries integrate into the world economy. Therefore, dictators in labor-abundant countries expand trade to neutralize democratization threats initiated by rising inequality. My argument uses supporting data from around eighty authoritarian regimes during the period from 1963 to 2003. I address endogeneity problems with dynamic panel data and instrumental variable regression models in this paper. My analyses suggest that economic globalization helps strengthen authoritarian regimes.
Wu, Wen-Chin. 2015. “Strategic Interaction and Empirical Models: An Application of Statistical Backward Induction to the US Special 301 Report.” Taiwanese Political Science Review 19(1): 99-145. [In Chinese]
While conventional statistical methods usually assume that the error term in the models are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), this assumption is usually violated when observations are interdependent due to the strategic interactions among players. The violation of the i.i.d assumption results in the inefficient estimation of standard errors that can further invalidate the hypothesis testing. This paper discusses the method of statistical backward induction (SBI) developed by Curtis S. Signorino and his coauthors that can be used to analyze different kinds of strategic interactions in politics, such as electoral competitions, party coalitions, and international conflicts. After demonstrating how to derive the SBI estimator, this paper applies SBI to analyze how the U.S. government uses the Special 301 Report to coerce its trade partners into protecting the intellectual property rights (IPR) of American products. It shows that one country’s trade surplus with the U.S. is a key determinant for the U.S. to nominate this trade partner in the Special 301 Report. Meanwhile, it is the dependence on the U.S. market that affects the nominated country’s decision to ignore or comply with the U.S. threat of trade retaliation implied by the Special 301 Report.
政治學的諸多主題，例如選舉競爭、政黨結盟、以及國際衝突等，皆涉及到行為者之間的策略互動。本文引介近來在美國政治學界新興的統計模型：「逆推統計法」（statistical backward induction），此模型的特色在於使用改良後的統計方法，驗證由賽局模型所推導出的策略互動，進而符合「理論模型的實證意涵」（empirical implications of theoretical models, EITM）的研究典範。本文「隨機效用模型」（random utility model）出發，探討一般常見的「樣本選擇模型」（sample selection model）與「巢狀勝算對數模型」（nested logit model）為何無法有效處理具有策略互動性質的資料，並逐步解釋「逆推統計法」如何結賽局理論與統計模型來分析這類資料。本文最後採用「逆推統計法」，一方面分析影響美國貿易代表處如何擬定「特別三○一名單」，以及被列名國家如何回應的因素，一方面說明如何將「逆推統計法」應用於外交政策的實證研究。