Ananda, A. (2023)

Informed citizenry is central to a well-functioning democracy—political knowledge helps define and stabilize preferences as well as inform vote choices. In this paper, I studied the effect of political knowledge on vote choice in the context of high polarization and democratic challenges during the 2019 Indonesian presidential election. Additionally, I looked at how the timing of individual’s first exposure to democratic principles affect their present conceptions and attitudes towards democracy. Using original survey data collected in five major cities in Indonesia (N = 2,500), I found strong cohort effect: those socialized under authoritarianism are less likely to vote for the pro-democracy candidate compared to those socialized after Indonesia’s democratization. However, I also found that political knowledge could be a substitute to socialization to democracy: increasing political knowledge increases the likelihood of voting for the pro-democracy candidate.

Ananda, A. (2023)

Literature on gendered survey taking strategies found that women tend to be more hesitant than men when expressing their political preferences and less likely to guess on political knowledge items. This helps to partially explain why there is a gender gap, manifesting as higher rates of Don’t Know (DK) responses. Using a framework used to examine gender stereotype threat, I analysed the impact of interviewer’s gender and interview conditions on women’s responses to political preference items. Applying a survey experiment using four waves of the Asian Barometer Survey (2005-2021) in four Southeast Asian countries, I found greater likelihood of DK responses among women respondents interviewed by men and among women respondents where non-family members were present during the interview compared to men and other women with ‘ideal’ interview conditions. These findings contribute to our interpretation of the gender gap in political preferences and knowledge, and future considerations of interview conditions in survey designs.

Ananda, A. (2023)

Do men and women understand ‘democracy’ differently? The question is important as research on attitudes towards democracy relies on the assumption that the public shares a common understanding of the concept. Yet, evidence shows that there is variation in democratic understanding (DU), especially in developing democracies. To examine this, I manually coded over 7,000 responses to Asian Barometer Survey’s open-ended meaning of democracy question to measure levels of understanding. The results show a systematic gender gap across all levels of indicators of DU complexity: women are less likely to offer a definition of democracy, and are less likely to hold complex multidimensional DU. However, they also suggest that equalizing education and income levels can moderate the DU gender gap for women, which pave the way for more promising avenues in DU research as well as has the potential to improve women’s role and participation in democracy.