Research

I study how elite strategy shapes (1) democratic legitimacy under autocracy and democratic backsliding and (2) the psychology of conflict escalation and deescalation, with a focus on China, the United States, and their interactions. Centering around mass-elite interactions about democracy and conflict, my scholarship sheds light on regime dynamics and the interplay between domestic politics and international relations through the lens of political communication and political psychology.

My research is driven by normative and policy concerns. To date, it 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.

Books / Monographs

• Quek, Kai, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. 2026. Deescalating a Trade War: Strategies of Reciprocation amid US-China Great Power Competition. Cambridge University Press (Elements in International Relations Series). [replication material]
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. Propaganda as Provocation: How Autocrats Use Political Rhetoric to Impede Democratic Uprisings. Dissertation book project.
  • Winner of 2026 APSA Democracy and Autocracy Section’s Juan Linz Best Dissertation Award
  • Honorable mention of 2026 APSA Political Psychology Section’s Best Dissertation Award

Publications

• Shum, Maggie, Eddy S. F. Yeung, Ka Ming Chan, Sanho Chung, Athena Tong, and Sam Yip. Forthcoming. “Voice After Exit: The Prioritization of Homeland-Facing Foreign Policy among the Hong Kong Diaspora.” Political Behavior. [replication material]
  • Keywords: diaspora, policy preference, transnational ties, integration, conjoint experiment, Hong Kong
  • Abstract:

    Citizens around the world have migrated under the shadow of authoritarianism, and many are increasingly acquiring political and voting rights in their host countries. Yet we know little about the content of their foreign-policy preferences or the salience with which they prioritize homeland-facing issues relative to domestic concerns. We argue that experiences of authoritarian rule prior to migration generate anti-regime sentiments among diasporas, inclining them toward hawkish foreign-policy positions toward the homeland regime. These preferences heighten the salience of homeland-facing foreign policy, even relative to highly consequential domestic issues. We test this argument with harmonized candidate-choice experiments administered to an original sample of Hong Kong diasporas in four host countries (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We find that respondents strongly preferred candidates advocating hawkish economic and geopolitical policies against China. These foreign-policy positions were consistently prioritized over salient domestic issues such as healthcare and the economy, and this structure of preferences held across subgroups with varying degrees of host-country integration and homeland ties. Our findings provide novel experimental evidence that diasporas continue to care intensely about and voice on behalf of their homeland even after exit.
• Peskowitz, Zachary, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. Forthcoming. “Does Preference Intensity Matter? Reexamining Policy Representation in the American States.” Political Science Research and Methods. [replication material]
  • Keywords: preference intensity, policy representation, congruence, state politics, quadratic voting, measurement
  • 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.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Weifang Xu. 2026. “Do External Threats Increase Bipartisanship in the United States? An Experimental Test in the Shadow of China’s Rise.” Political Science Research and Methods 14(1): 190–200. [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.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F. 2025. “Dynamic Democratic Backsliding.” British Journal of Political Science 55: e164. [replication material, preprint]
  • Winner of 2025 APSA Democracy and Autocracy Section’s Best Paper Award
  • Winner of 2023 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. 2025. “Are People Willing to Trade Away Democracy for Desirable Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from Six Countries.” Comparative Political Studies, in press. [replication material]
  • Coverage: Good Authority (editor’s commentary)
  • 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.
• 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]
  • Coverage: Faculti
  • 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 2024 APSA Political Communication Section’s Timothy E. Cook Best Graduate Student Paper Award
  • Abstract:

    Where democratic uprisings have gained momentum, some autocracies respond by disseminating propaganda that 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 logic behind it? I propose a theory of propaganda as provocation. By using provocative propaganda to radicalize protesters in social movements, autocrats can delegitimize regime opponents and dissuade others from joining forces with the opposition. Thus, provocative propaganda can help reduce the cost of repression and impede democratic uprisings. I experimentally test the psychological microfoundations in Hong Kong, showing that regime opponents became more angered, disgusted, and supportive of protest violence upon exposure to provocative propaganda. I offer additional evidence by tracing Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Movement, illustrating the strategic dynamics of provocative propaganda and the delegitimizing impact of protest radicalization—consistent with the logic of propaganda as provocation.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., and Burak Kazim Yilmaz. “The Electoral Consequences of Foreign Side-Taking in the Shadow of Geopolitical Tensions.”
  • Abstract:

    Foreign electoral intervention is an increasingly popular tool for authoritarian powers to influence politics in the international system. One direct but understudied form of intervention is overt side-taking, a meddler’s explicit verbal endorsement of a domestic candidate. We unpack its impact on domestic electoral dynamics, theorizing a kiss-of-death logic: overt side-taking by a foreign rival will generate electoral backlash against the endorsed candidate. Consistent with this claim, a large-scale experiment administered to American voters shows that candidates endorsed by a US rival suffered significant electoral backlash, especially among respondents holding strong geopolitical concerns about the adversary. Ally endorsements, by contrast, aided endorsed candidates. A follow-up experiment finds that media warnings about the disingenuous nature of rival endorsements didn’t temper their adverse electoral impact. These findings suggest that foreign adversaries can exploit the kiss-of-death logic and tip the balance of electoral support in favor of their preferred candidate through words alone.
• Conklin, Matthew J., and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Putting Competition in Context: Material Capabilities, Foreign Hawkishness, and Conflict Escalation amid Great Power Rivalry.”
  • Abstract:

    How does information about an adversary influence public bellicosity in a crisis scenario? Leveraging US-China tensions around the Taiwan Strait—a challenging context for de-escalation—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 public support for conflict escalation, even amid great power tensions. Importantly, information portraying foreign citizens as less aggressive significantly increased support for de-escalation in both countries. These findings not only challenge theoretical expectations that an adversary’s perceived vulnerability or weakness incentivizes aggression, but also identifies foreign public opinion as a distinct informational signal that shapes how individuals assess adversaries and can sway domestic support for conflict escalation.
• 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.
• Fan, Lisa, Tony Zirui Yang, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Echoes of Erosion: Communicating Foreign Democratic Backsliding in Autocratizing Regimes.”
  • Abstract:

    Political communication plays an important role in shaping democratic norms and resilience. However, little is known about how politicians communicate democratic erosion abroad to reorient domestic discourse about democracy. We argue that in countries experiencing autocratization, elites have strategic incentives to contest narratives of foreign democratic erosion by framing their rivals as democratic threats. Empirically, we draw on a large corpus of social media data to analyze how politicians in three autocratizing regimes—Hungary, Poland, and Türkiye—communicated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, a globally salient episode of democratic erosion. Across three countries, we uncover strikingly similar communication patterns: opposition elites extensively used US backsliding to warn against domestic illiberalism, whereas ruling party elites framed the event as a security threat and countercharged the opposition as endangering democracy. The competitive framing dynamics uncovered by our study has implications for how autocratization events spill over in an interconnected world.
• Hu, Yuhan, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Democracy, Autocracy, and Foreign Public Response to Protester Violence.”
  • Abstract:

    How do international publics react to protester violence? International support plays an important role in shaping protest trajectories, yet surprisingly little is known about how foreign public opinion responds. We develop moral and rationalist mechanisms to argue that violent protests may suffer less popular backlash from international audiences when directed against autocracies than against democracies. Contrary to theoretical expectations, our harmonized experiments in the US and UK reveal that individuals do not judge foreign violent protests differently across democracies and autocracies. Compared to nonviolent tactics, violent tactics garner lower foreign public support and boost the international legitimacy of state repression among foreign democratic publics, regardless of the political system under which the protests take place. These findings offer microfoundational evidence of how the nonviolent legitimacy premium operates internationally, demonstrating that the appeal of nonviolence travels across borders and regime types.
• Gandhi, Jennifer, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Identifying Backsliding: The Influence of Comparisons on Americans’ Assessments of Subnational Democracy.”
  • Abstract:

    Building on theories in behavioral economics and psychology, we investigate the role of comparisons in shaping Americans’ assessments of subnational democracy. In two preregistered national experiments (N = 10,500), we find that individuals' assessments of democracy are meaningfully shaped by the presence of comparators in their information environment, underscoring how comparisons induce contrast in assessment. Democracy in a state under evaluation was assessed more favorably when respondents were primed to think about another state that is less democratic. Conversely, when confronted with a more democratic comparator, respondents downgraded their assessment of democracy in the state under evaluation. These results generally hold not only in a hypothetical setting that maximized experimental control but also in a realistic setting that allowed respondents to choose their own comparator. Our findings, which hold regardless of partisanship, highlight the importance of reference points in influencing citizens’ assessments of their political system and their ability to detect democratic backsliding.
• Chu, Jonathan A., Scott Williamson, and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “The Mass Public Foundations of Democratic Resilience.”
  • Abstract:

    Democratic resilience hinges not only on institutional design or elite behavior but also on the beliefs, values, and coordination of ordinary citizens. Yet the rapidly expanding public opinion literature in the current era of democratic backsliding lacks a unifying framework that specifies when mass attitudes sustain democratic governance. Put concisely, under what conditions does public opinion on democracy matter for the sustainability of democracy? We develop a framework organized around two fundamental requisites for mass-level democratic resilience: a coordination requirement (a shared understanding and judgment of what democracy is and is not) and an activation requirement (a sufficiently high valuation of democracy both intrinsically and relative to other goods). Conceptualizing these two requisites allows us to identify four anti-democratic tactics that target the public’s role in sustaining democracy: redefining democracy, hijacking democratic language, smearing democracy as a system, and reorienting people’s attention away from democracy and toward policy outcomes instead. This framework helps to systematize and draw implications from the comparative public opinion literature on democracy, and provide new understanding of successful and failed public defense of democracy, from South Korea’s reversal of martial law to the United States’s contested democratic moment.
• Yeung, Eddy S. F., Scott Williamson, Lisa Fan, and Jonathan A. Chu. “The Public Opinion Consequences of Voter Uncertainties about Democratic Outcomes.”
  • Abstract:

    Despite widespread support for democracy, anti-democratic politicians are often not punished—and pro-democratic politicians not rewarded—at the ballot box. Why? To explain this puzzle, we foreground the role of voter uncertainty and decompose it into two theoretical forms. First is intention uncertainty: whether or not the political candidate’s proposed policy intends to undermine or consolidate democracy. Second is implementation uncertainty: whether the candidate, if elected, can implement the policy as promised. We subject our theory to experimentation, randomizing both types of uncertainty and measuring their downstream effects on voter support across ten countries worldwide. The results suggest that intention uncertainty powerfully explains voters’ inability to punish or reward anti- and pro-democratic candidates, while implementation uncertainty can also contribute to voters’ leniency toward anti-democratic candidates. Our findings offer microfoundational insights into the rise and fall of anti- and pro-democratic politicians across the world, contributing to our understanding of democratic backsliding and defense through the lens of mass–elite interactions.
• Fan, Lisa, Humeyra Biricik, Eddy S. F. Yeung, and Scott Williamson. “Claiming Democracy: Strategic Variation in Authoritarian Democratic Rhetoric.”
  • Abstract:

    A key legitimation strategy for autocrats is to claim that they govern democratically. However, we know little about how and when they deploy democratic rhetoric in pursuit of this goal. Using a novel corpus of speeches from 51 regimes from 1999 to 2024, we employ supervised machine learning and transformer-based language models to measure rhetorical appeals to democracy by autocratic leaders. Our results suggest that autocrats strategically emphasize different aspects of democracy to align their rhetoric with the institutional framework of their regimes. Autocrats are more likely to invoke conventional, procedural understandings of democracy where their institutions more credibly support such claims, while those with weaker institutions resort to more authoritarian conceptions of democracy. We further show that democratic claims shift in response to different types of challenges, with autocrats more likely to invoke procedural democratic claims under political pressure. These findings suggest that democratic rhetoric is not just a blunt instrument of authoritarian propaganda, but instead reflects strategic attempts to leverage competing understandings of democracy to justify autocratic rule.
• Fan, Lisa, Humeyra Biricik, Eddy S. F. Yeung, and Scott Williamson. “How Autocrats Speak: Introducing a Global Dataset of Authoritarian Communication.”
  • Abstract:

    How do authoritarian leaders speak? Political communication is central to authoritarian rule, with consequences for public opinion, elite behavior, and regime stability. Yet, existing datasets focus on specific regions or time periods, limiting comparative research on authoritarian communication. This paper introduces a novel dataset of 50,872 texts collected from 77 authoritarian leaders across 60 countries from 1994 to 2024. Our approach integrates web scraping, archival research, and advanced natural language processing methods to systematically collect and process text data. Our corpus includes granular speech and statement-level data including original and machine-translated text, speakers, sentiment scores, and temporal markers. We validate the accuracy of our dataset against existing corpora, and apply our corpus to generate novel insights into the study of comparative politics and international relations. In an era when autocrats increasingly rely on information control, our dataset offers essential tools for understanding the rhetorical toolkit of modern authoritarianism.
• Conklin, Matthew J., and Eddy S. F. Yeung. “Leader Reputation and Asymmetric Resistance to Rapprochement: Evidence from US-China Relations.”
  • Abstract:

    How does a foreign leader’s reputation shape domestic responses to rapprochement? While recent research suggests that foreign doves are more likely to elicit favorable public responses, we argue that this international advantage can be constrained by characteristics of the conflict dyad, especially the national publics involved. In mirror experiments administered to American and Chinese citizens (N = 6,000) using the South China Sea as an empirical context, we uncover asymmetric public reactions to the olive branch. Chinese dovish leaders were more likely than hawkish leaders to elicit Americans’ support for reciprocation to a rapprochement gesture, but American dovish leaders did not fare better among the Chinese public. Two follow-up experiments (N = 4,856) rule out issue indivisibility and structural power imbalances as potential mechanisms, instead suggesting that hawkish national sentiments better explain the asymmetry. Our findings show that doves’ international advantage is more contextually sensitive than previously appreciated and identify a source of that sensitivity.

Selected Work in Progress

• “Foreign Democratic Backsliding and Domestic Democratic Resilience” (with Ka Ming Chan and Hsu Yumin Wang)
• “Mass Understandings of Free and Fair Elections” (with Jonathan A. Chu, Lisa Fan, Bardia Rahmani, and Scott Williamson)
• “The Politics of Antipolitics” (with Lisa Fan and Scott Williamson)
• “Secrecy Appeals and Public Support for Conflict Escalation” (with Matthew J. Conklin and Sam Sharman)
• “Whataboutism and Public Support for Foreign Interference” (with Matthew J. Conklin and Sam Sharman)
• “Founding Myths Reimagined: The Rationalist Microfoundation of National Narratives” (with Peng Peng)
• “The Wages of Whiteness in Contemporary America” (with Hsu Yumin Wang)
• “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]