Research

I study how political communication and elite strategy shape democratic legitimacy under autocracy and the psychology of conflict escalation and deescalation, with a focus on East Asia, the United States, and their interactions.

Situated in the global context of rising misinformation on social media, my research unpacks how authoritarian actors use propaganda and other strategies to distort public opinion and manipulate mass beliefs, with implications for political violence and authoritarian resilience. I also examine how great power competition between China and the United States constrains public support for international cooperation and under what conditions such constraints can be tamped down, shedding light on the interplay between domestic politics and international relations through the lens of political psychology. Concerned about escalating US-China tensions and their implications for international security, my ongoing projects combine behavioral frameworks with modern social science techniques to study deterrence and rapprochement. Beyond studying mass-elite interactions about democracy and conflict, my other work grapples with the intersection of race, welfare, and ideology in American politics from a comparative perspective.

My research is driven by normative and policy concerns. To date, my research has been supported by the American Political Science Association, the Halle Institute for Global Research, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Stand Together Trust, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Publications

• Yeung, Eddy S. F. Forthcoming. “Dynamic Democratic Backsliding.” British Journal of Political Science.
  • Winner of APSA Democracy and Autocracy Section’s Best Paper Award
  • Winner of APSA Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior Section’s Early-Career Fellowship
  • Keywords: democratic backsliding, vertical accountability, public opinion, voter behavior, American democracy
  • Abstract:

    Democratic backsliding occurs incrementally, but the empirical study of how citizens respond to undemocratic politicians has been predominantly static. I formulate and test predictions about how different sequences of backsliding shape accountability. Using a novel preregistered experiment (N = 4,234) capturing the reality that democratic transgressions are committed by elected officials step by step, I find that a majority of American respondents—against the backdrop of partisan and policy interests—are willing to electorally remove the incumbent as episodes of democratic backsliding unfold. Moreover, incumbents who incrementally decrease the severity of democratic transgressions are held accountable more promptly than incumbents who incrementally increase or sporadically vary the severity. By establishing a new experimental framework to study democratic backsliding, my dynamic approach not only paints a more nuanced picture of Americans’ willingness to defend democracy, but also demonstrates that sequence matters in shaping voter behavior amid incremental transgressions of democracy.
• Chu, Jonathan A., Scott Williamson, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. Forthcoming. “Are People Willing to Trade Away Democracy for Desirable Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from Six Countries.” Comparative Political Studies. [replication material]
  • Keywords: democracy, autocracy, public opinion, democratic commitment, experiment
  • Abstract:

    To what extent do people prioritize living in a democracy over other indicators of good governance or personal well-being? This question has become contested as democracies come under pressure worldwide. We provide an answer through cross-national conjoint experiments in which survey respondents choose between hypothetical countries that differ in terms of societal-level attributes (e.g., elections, health care) and individual-level outcomes that the respondent would experience (e.g., wealth, minority status). People across Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United States consistently prioritize living in a safe country with free and fair elections over other factors, including other components of democracy like civil liberties and checks and balances. Regarding tradeoffs, many people would forfeit democratic elections to avoid living in a dangerous society but not to obtain wealth and other goods. Electoral democracy is attractive globally but can be undermined by concerns about crime and safety.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Joseph Glasgow. 2025. “Racialized Misinformation, Factual Corrections, and Prejudicial Attitudes: The Cases of Welfare and Immigration.” The Journal of Politics, in press. [replication material, preprint]
  • Coverage: Good Authority (editor’s commentary)
  • Keywords: prejudice reduction, racialized misinformation, factual corrections, welfare, immigration
  • Abstract:

    Misunderstandings about marginalized social groups are widespread among the American public and can play an important role in shaping outgroup prejudice. Does correcting racialized misperceptions about marginalized groups mitigate prejudicial attitudes? To test the impact of factual corrections, we conduct three preregistered survey experiments in the US (N = 8,306). Study 1 and Study 2 draw on the case of welfare and inform respondents that the share of Black welfare recipients is lower than that of White recipients. Study 3 focuses on the case of immigration and informs respondents that immigrants’ crime rate is lower than natives’ crime rate. Across three well-powered experiments, we estimate null to minuscule effects of factual corrections on multiple measures of prejudice—although our informational interventions significantly reduced misperceptions about Blacks and immigrants. These findings illuminate the scope conditions of factual corrections’ efficacy in improving citizens’ attitudes toward minority groups and have implications for scholarship on belief-attitude relationships.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Weifang Xu. 2025. “Do External Threats Increase Bipartisanship in the United States? An Experimental Test in the Shadow of China’s Rise.” Political Science Research and Methods, in press. [replication material]
  • Keywords: external threat, polarization, elite cues, foreign policy, US-China relations, replication
  • Abstract:

    Do external threats increase American bipartisanship? We subject this question to an experimental test. Leveraging the Biden and Trump administrations’ similar characterization of the China threat, we exposed American respondents to real-world primes about security threats from China, while randomizing the messenger of such primes. We find that the threat primes—regardless of the partisan identity of their messenger—boosted Democrats’ and Republicans’ support for assertive foreign policy in a largely parallel manner, thereby failing to reduce preference polarization. Importantly, there were no measurable changes across multiple indicators of affective polarization. These findings clarify the limits of external threats in uniting Americans, while also challenging recent perspectives that external threats—often colored by elite rhetoric—will further polarize the American public.
• Wang, Hsu Yumin, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. 2025. “Mimicking Democracy: The Legitimizing Role of Redistributionist Propaganda in Autocracies.” The Journal of Politics 87(4): 1600–16. [replication material, preprint]
  • Keywords: propaganda, redistribution, autocracy, democratic legitimacy, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    Autocrats often disseminate propaganda to boast about their redistributive efforts. Why is such propaganda so prevalent in autocracies? We propose a novel explanation: redistributionist propaganda helps autocrats fortify a façade of democracy. Our argument is premised on nuanced understandings of democracy among the masses: many citizens do not hold a strict, procedural view of democracy; instead, they often understand democracy through the lens of social equity. Exploiting such nuanced understandings of democracy, autocrats can deploy redistributionist propaganda to manipulate public opinion on how “equity-promoting”—and therefore how “democracy-promoting”—the regime is. To evaluate our argument, we first demonstrate with extensive cross-national survey data that perceived social equity strongly predicts perceived democratic legitimacy among global citizens. We then probe the causal effect of redistributionist propaganda by using a preregistered survey experiment that exploits real-world propaganda material in China. Consistent with our argument, respondents exposed to redistributionist propaganda evaluated China’s democracy more positively.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Kai Quek. 2025. “Self-Reported Political Ideology.” Political Science Research and Methods 13(2): 412–33. [replication material]
  • Listed as one of the most influential Political Science and IR articles 2024 by Cambridge University Press
  • Coverage: Atlantic, Good Authority (editor’s commentary)
  • Keywords: ideology, liberal, conservative, measurement, political sophistication
  • Abstract:

    American politics scholarship has relied extensively on self-reported measures of ideology. We evaluate these widely used measures through an original national survey. Descriptively, we show that Americans’ understandings of “liberal” and “conservative” are weakly aligned with conventional definitions of these terms and that such understandings are heterogeneous across social groups, casting doubt on the construct validity and measurement equivalence of ideological self-placements. Experimentally, we randomly assign one of three measures of ideology to each respondent: (1) the standard ANES question, (2) a version that adds definitions of “liberal” and “conservative,” and (3) a version that keeps these definitions but removes ideological labels from the question. We find that the third measure, which helps to isolate symbolic ideology from operational ideology, shifts self-reported ideology in important ways: Democrats become more conservative, and Republicans more liberal. These findings offer first-cut experimental evidence on the limitations of self-reported ideology as a measure of operational ideology, and contribute to ongoing debates about the use of ideological self-placements in American politics.
• Chu, Jonathan A., Scott Williamson, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. 2024. “People Consistently View Elections and Civil Liberties as Key Components of Democracy.” Science 386(6719): 291–96. [replication material]
  • Coverage: Cosmos, Folha, Phys.org, Science Magazine (Policy Forum), Science Podcast, The Conversation, Veja
  • Keywords: understanding of democracy, liberal democracy, democratic legitimacy, comparative public opinion
  • Abstract:

    How do people around the world define democracy? Answering this question is critical as countries face democratic backsliding and authoritarian governments promote alternative notions of democracy. Indeed, some scholars argue that people from different backgrounds understand democracy differently. By contrast, we discovered very consistent views about what constitutes a “democratic” country from conjoint survey experiments conducted in Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United States. Across countries (N = 6,150) and diverse subgroups within countries, people similarly emphasized free and fair elections and civil liberties as being the key determinants of democracy. Countries that produce desirable social and economic outcomes are also considered more democratic, but these and other factors exert a smaller and less consistent effect than elections and civil liberties.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., Mengqiao Wang, and Kai Quek. 2024. “What Is a Patriot? A Cross-National Study in China and the United States.” Foreign Policy Analysis 20(2): orae007. [replication material, preprint]
  • Keywords: patriotism, nationalism, national identity, China and the United States, public opinion, foreign policy preferences
  • Abstract:

    Patriotism is a pervasive political force. However, not much is known about how people understand what it means to be “patriotic” in the first place. We conduct a cross-country study of mass understandings of patriotism. Through parallel national surveys in two global superpowers—China and the United States—we uncover the substantively different understandings of what it means to be “patriotic” between and within countries, and how the different understandings may map onto different policy preferences. In particular, while the literature draws a distinction between (benign) patriotism and (malign) nationalism, we find that most Chinese respondents—and about a third of American respondents—understand patriotism as nationalism. The nationalistic understanding of patriotism, in turn, corresponds to more hawkish foreign policy preferences. By unpacking folk intuitions about patriotism and mapping them onto existing scholarly debates, we bridge the distance between the academic literature and the mass political behavior it seeks to explain.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2024. “Can Conservatives Be Persuaded? Framing Effects on Support for Universal Basic Income in the US.” Political Behavior 46(1): 135–61. [replication material, slides]
  • Coverage: Fortune
  • Keywords: universal basic income, framing, conservative, welfare, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    Universal basic income (UBI) has been proposed as a policy response to technological advances and structural inequality. Yet, recent data show that most conservatives in Europe and the US are strongly opposed to the welfare proposal. Can framing UBI as a policy that conforms to their ideological predispositions overcome such opposition? Exploiting the compatibility of UBI with core conservative ideals such as individualism and laissez-faire government, I design an original survey experiment that randomly exposes respondents to one of two frames: (1) an equalizing-opportunity frame which emphasizes that UBI creates a level playing field and promotes self-responsibility, or (2) a limiting-government frame which highlights UBI as a policy that limits government and reduces bureaucracy. I find that American conservatives—identified by using 10 policy statements—remained strongly opposed to UBI even after they were presented with such frames. Analyses of open-ended responses, which show that how conservatives explained their opposition to UBI remained unchanged regardless of framing, reinforce this conclusion. Conservatives’ opposition to UBI remained rigid, even after the key components of UBI that fit the conservative ideology were accentuated. These results shed light on the political feasibility of framing UBI, and the rigidity of welfare attitudes among American conservatives.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2023. “Overestimation of the Level of Democracy among Citizens in Nondemocracies.” Comparative Political Studies 56(2): 228–66. [replication material, preprint]
  • Keywords: nondemocratic regimes, comparative public opinion, media control, democratic legitimacy, authoritarian resilience
  • Abstract:

    Overestimation of the level of democracy is prevalent among citizens in nondemocracies. Despite such prevalence, no research to date has systematically documented this phenomenon and examined its determinants. Yet given the renewed interest in the role of legitimacy in authoritarian survival, studying whether and why this phenomenon arises is important to our understanding of authoritarian resilience. I argue that, even in the absence of democratic institutions in nondemocracies, autocrats exercise media control in order to boost their democratic legitimacy. This façade of democracy, in turn, benefits their survival. Combining media freedom data with individual survey response data that include over 30,000 observations from 22 nondemocracies, I find that overestimation of the level of democracy is greater in countries with stronger media control. But highly educated citizens overestimate less. These findings shed light on media control as a strategy for authoritarian survival, and have important implications for modernization theory.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Kai Quek. 2022. “Relative Gains in the Shadow of a Trade War.” International Organization 76(3): 741–65. [replication material]
  • Coverage: Brookings
  • Keywords: relative gains, other-regarding preferences, trade, US-China relations, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    When do people care about relative gains in trade? Much of the international relations scholarship—and much of the political rhetoric on trade—would lead us to expect support for a trade policy that benefits ourselves more than it benefits others. Yet, a large interdisciplinary literature also points to the prevalence and importance of other-regarding preferences, rendering the conventional wisdom contestable. We investigate whether and how relative gains influence trade preferences through an original survey experiment in the midst of the China–US trade war. We find that in a win-win scenario, relative gains shape trade opinion: if both sides are gaining, people want to gain more than their foreign trade partner. However, these considerations are offset in a win-lose scenario where the other side is losing out. Relative-gains considerations causally affect opinion on trade, but not in a “beggar-thy-neighbor” or even a “beggar-thy-rival” situation. These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of relative gains in international relations and provide the first experimental evidence that relative-gains considerations can be offset by other-regarding preferences in international trade.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2021. “Does Immigration Boost Public Euroscepticism in European Union Member States?” European Union Politics 22(4): 631–54. [replication material, preprint]
  • Coverage: European Politics and Policy
  • Keywords: European integration, Euroscepticism, immigration, public opinion
  • Abstract:

    A number of studies have established a strong link between anti-immigration and Eurosceptic attitudes. But does this relationship necessarily imply that more immigration would increase public Euroscepticism in member states of the European Union? I evaluate this question by analyzing immigration data and Eurobarometer survey data over the period 2009–2017. The analysis shows no evidence that individual levels of Euroscepticism increase with actual levels of immigration. This result suggests that a strong link between anti-immigration and Eurosceptic attitudes does not necessarily translate into a strong link between immigration levels and public Euroscepticism. Public Euroscepticism can still be low even if immigration levels are high.

Working Papers

• Yeung, Eddy S. F. “The Logic of Provocative Propaganda in the Shadow of Democratic Uprisings.”
  • Winner of Timothy E. Cook Best Graduate Student Paper Award
  • Abstract:

    Where democratic uprisings have gained momentum, some autocracies respond by disseminating propaganda that blatantly taunts and mocks their political opponents. Instead of diverting citizens’ attention away from opposition voices, such propaganda directs its rhetoric and public attention toward the antiregime movement. What is the political logic behind it? I propose a theory of propaganda as provocation. By using provocative propaganda to radicalize protesters in social movements, autocrats can discredit regime opponents and dissuade others from joining forces with the opposition. Thus, provocative propaganda can help delegitimize the opposition and impede democratic uprisings. I experimentally test the psychological microfoundations in Hong Kong, showing that regime opponents became more enraged, disgusted, and supportive of protest violence upon exposure to provocative propaganda. I offer additional evidence by tracing Hong Kong’s Anti-ELAB movement, illustrating the strategic dynamics of provocative propaganda and the delegitimizing impact of protest radicalization—consistent with the logic of propaganda as provocation.
• Gandhi, Jennifer, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Identifying Backsliding: The Influence of Comparisons on Americans’ Assessments of Subnational Democracy.”
  • Abstract:

    Comparisons often feature in political discourse on democracy. How do comparisons—across space and time—influence mass perceptions of democracy? Building on economic and psychological theories, we investigate the role of comparisons in shaping Americans’ assessments of subnational democracy. In two preregistered national experiments (N = 8,013), we uncover a “positivity bias” in Americans’ evaluation of democracy. When given information about how the current, somewhat undemocratic state was already “more democratic” than its neighboring state or its recent past, respondents applied cross-state and cross-temporal comparisons and evaluated the present state more optimistically. However, when the current state was being compared with a “democratically superior’’ neighboring state or recent past, the same dynamics of contrast disappeared such that respondents did not revise their democratic evaluation downward. These findings, which hold regardless of partisanship, raise normative concerns about citizens’ ability to detect democratic backsliding and coordinate against it as antidemocratic politicians erode democracy incrementally and subnationally.
• Peskowitz, Zachary, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Does Preference Intensity Matter? Reexamining Policy Representation in the American States.”
  • Abstract:

    Preference intensity may play an important role in shaping mass political behavior, yet existing empirical scholarship on representation typically relies on survey measures that capture public opinion in terms of preference directionality without intensity. We use a variety of measures—not only the standard Likert and “most important policy” items but also the quadratic voting method—to reassess responsiveness and congruence of a diverse set of American state policies that vary in issue areas and salience. Across multiple novel measures, we consistently find that state-level preference intensity does not reliably predict actual policy outcomes. We contribute new evidence that the lack of policy representation in the American states remains—even if preference intensity is systematically integrated into the empirical analysis.
• Conklin, Matthew J., and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Power and Public Hawkishness: Domestic Support for Conflict Escalation amid Great Power Competition.”
  • Abstract:

    How does information about the power and aggressiveness of an adversary influence public bellicosity in a crisis scenario? Leveraging US-China tensions around the Taiwan Strait—a challenging context for de-escalation—as an empirical setting, we assess whether American and Chinese citizens adopt a more belligerent or conciliatory position when presented with factual indicators that reveal different levels of economic power, military capability, or public hawkishness of the other side. Our large-scale dyadic experiments show that information portraying the adversary as materially weaker did not increase their preferences for conflict escalation, even amid great power tensions. Importantly, information portraying foreign citizens as less aggressive significantly increased public support for de-escalation in both countries. These findings not only cut against the theoretical perspective that a heightened sense of power will motivate people to support war, but also uncover foreign hawkishness as an underappreciated factor that can sway domestic support for using military force.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Matthew J. Conklin. “Hawks, Doves, and Rapprochement in the South China Sea: Evidence from Mirror Experiments in China and the United States.”
  • Abstract:

    Are hawks or doves better at making peace? Existing scholarship mainly focuses on how domestic audiences react to hawks and doves when they initiate rapprochement. Building on the latest research that focuses on foreign audiences and leveraging the South China Sea as an empirical context, we fielded replications and mirror experiments in China (N = 3,005) and the United States (N = 2,995) to investigate how Chinese and American citizens respond to rapprochement initiatives of the other side as its leader’s reputation varies. We uncover asymmetric public reactions to the olive branch: while Chinese dovish leaders were more likely to elicit Americans’ support for reciprocation than Chinese hawkish leaders, American dovish leaders did not fare better than American hawkish leaders among the Chinese public. These findings not only contribute new evidence that doves could fare better in rapprochement dynamics, but also show that doves’ international advantage may be more contextually sensitive than previously appreciated.
• Lai, Ruilin, Eddy S. F. Yeung, and Matthew Gabel. “After Repression: The Impacts of Confession Propaganda upon Failed Uprisings.”
  • Abstract:

    In the aftermath of unsuccessful uprisings, many autocrats publicly broadcast dissidents’ confessions to their wrongdoings. Despite the prevalence of confession propaganda in autocracies worldwide, its influence on the public—the very audience exposed to such political messaging—remains unclear. We develop an identity-based theory to hypothesize about the impacts of confession propaganda on different political camps and experimentally test the observable implications in Hong Kong, where the political divide between regime supporters and opponents has remained salient since the failed uprising and widespread repression in 2020. The results from our preregistered experiment (N = 3,448) indicate that confession propaganda fails to appease the existing support base but helps to deter dissent by inducing self-censorship. However, it triggers attitudinal backlash among independents who lack a pro-regime or anti-regime identity. Our theory and evidence elucidate the mechanism and limits of a common strategy wielded by autocrats to stabilize their regime following large-scale repression of dissent.
• Shum, Maggie, Eddy S. F. Yeung, Ka Ming Chan, Sanho Chung, Athena Tong, and Sam Yip. “Voice After Exit: Diaspora, Transnational Linked Fate, and Political Preferences Abroad.”
  • Abstract:

    Diasporas increasingly gain voting rights, engage in political mobilization, and shape the political landscape worldwide. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how they form their political attitudes in the first place. This article unpacks the structure of diasporas’ policy preferences by introducing the concept of transnational linked fate—the sense of interconnectedness among diasporas as shaped by their shared experiences, struggles, and geopolitical context prior to migration. Such group consciousness, we argue, can powerfully influence their foreign policy preferences. To evaluate our claim, we administered harmonized candidate-choice experiments to an original sample of Hong Kong diasporas in four host countries. We find that candidates endorsing hawkish policies against China in economic and geopolitical issues enjoyed significant electoral dividends. Such foreign policy preferences were so intense that other domestic issues played little to no roles in influencing respondents’ decision making. This extreme structure of political preferences remained similar even among respondents who were already highly assimilated into the host country or had weak social ties with the homeland. These findings not only shed new light on diasporas’ formation of political preferences, but also underscore how transnational identities can reverberate across borders to shape host-country elections and foreign-policy debates.

Work in Progress

• “Foreign Meddling by Adverse Side-Taking” (with Burak Kazim Yilmaz)
• “The Wages of Whiteness in Contemporary America” (with Hsu Yumin Wang)
• “The Mass Public Foundations of Democratic Resilience” (with Jonathan A. Chu and Scott Williamson)
• “Principled Opposition to Violence: The Legitimacy Premium of Nonviolent Protests across Regime Types” (with Yuhan Hu)
• “Reciprocities in International Politics” (with Kai Quek)
• “Evaluating the Impacts of Taiwan’s Conscription Reform and Civil Defense Mobilization amid the Risk of War” (with Renard Sexton, Hans Tung, and Hsu Yumin Wang)
• Empirical Microfoundations of Deterrence: Signaling and Perceptions of Resolve and Reassurance in Real-Time Conflict (book project with Renard Sexton)

Null Results Reports / Dormant Papers

• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2024. “Learning to Love Trade? The Impact of Positive Sociotropic Information on Public Support for International Trade.” [preanalysis plans]
• Wang, Hsu Yumin, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. 2022. “Attitudes toward Internal Migrants and Support for Redistribution: Evidence from Shanghai.” [replication material, preanalysis plan]