台灣經濟不平等與民主支持

近年來對全球民主倒退的憂慮頻仍，有論者以為當代民主政治正面臨許多治理或崩潰危機，因此興起對民主支持（support for democracy）的研究，以檢驗民主政治的穩固與否，本文便依循這樣的研究脈絡，觀察台灣的民主支持變化。在許多影響民主支持的因素中，過去文獻指出經濟不平等的重要性，既有理論認為經濟不平等可能透過兩種影響民主支持，一種是因為民眾渴望民主政治的重分配特性，因此在經濟不平等時產生更多民主支持；另一種是因為民眾經過民主政治的洗禮後仍對經濟不平等有所不滿，因此其民主支持有所下降。本文運用亞洲民主動態調查（Asian Barometer Survey）第五波台灣區資料，並以多元迴歸（multiple regression analysis）以及多項式對數勝算模型（multinomial logistic regression）的方法檢驗台灣經濟不平等與民主支持的關係，並將民主支持區分為直接民主支持與間接民主支持，發現經濟不平等導致直接民主支持下降，但是對間接民主支持並無影響，本文推測是因為間接民主支持代表的民主價值觀是比較長期的政治社會化因素形成的政治文化，民主價值已經內化成民眾的價值觀，較難受到短期因素或是經濟議題的影響。同時，在民主支持次分類的討論中，相較於民主反對者，在經濟不平等的影響下，民眾有比較高的勝算成為低直接民主支持與高間接民主支持的民主理想者，符合本文先前的研究發現，亦回應了既有理論在經濟不平等與民主支持關係上的解釋。

關鍵字

經濟不平等；民主支持；現代化理論；直接民主支持；間接民主支持；亞洲民主動態調查

並列摘要

The global democratic recession in recent years has been of concern to scholars who have argued that democracy nowadays is facing many governance or breakdown crises. Research has been conducted on the support for democracy to explore the stability of democracy. Therefore, this article follows the context of these issues; observing the change of support for democracy in Taiwan. Previous studies have pointed out the importance of economic inequality, existing theories believe that two approaches may affect the support for democracy, one is that people escalate the support for democracy because they might desire more redistribution through democratic politics, and the other one is that people reduce the support for democracy because they are dissatisfied with the performance of the democracy. This article uses multiple regression analysis and multinomial logistic regression to exanimate the relationship between the support for democracy and the economic inequality of Taiwan, which divides the support for democracy into two categories: direct support for democracy and indirect support for democracy, and finding that the economic inequality leads to the reduction of direct support for democracy. However, there is no evidence for the relationship between the indirect support for democracy and economic inequality, it could be the democratic value represented by the indirect support for democracy is a political culture formed by political socialization. The democratic value is a consolidation and difficult to affect by short-term factor-like economic issues. Meanwhile, among the support for democracy sub-categories, compared with the democratic- dissent, the citizens have more odds to be the democratic-consenter, and it is consistent with the former founding in this article as well as respond to the relationship between the economic inequality and the support for democracy of the existing theories.

並列關鍵字

Economic inequality ； support for democracy ； Modernization theory ； direct support for democracy ； indirect support for democracy ； Asian Barometer Survey