PUBLICATIONS

Dawson, J., Herman, L. E., and Ananda, A. (2023). Getting Central and Eastern Europe Right? How greater academic pluralism would improve collective knowledge-building in democratization studies. R&R at Problems of Post-Communism.

Azrout, R., van Spanje, J., and Ananda, A. (2023). Field of Greens: Issue Competition Between Niche and Mainstream Parties in the News. R&R in Party Politics.

Herman, L. E., Dawson, J., and Ananda, A. (2023). A Climate of Optimism? EU Policy-making, Political Science, and the Democratisation in Central and Eastern Europe. Comparative European Politics.

Ananda, A. and Dawson, J. (2023). Cultural Liberalism in Eastern and Western Europe: A Societal Antidote to Democratic Backsliding? Journal of European Public Policy.

Anderson, C., Bol, D., and Ananda, A. (2021). Humanity’s Attitudes About Democracy and Political Leaders: Patterns and Trends. Public Opinion Quarterly.

Ananda, A. and Bol, D. (2020). Does Knowing Democracy Affect Answers to Democratic Support Questions? A Survey Experiment in Indonesia. International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

WORKING PAPERS

  • 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)

    Politics are taught at an early age as ‘a man’s world’, dissuading many women in socially conservative societies from participating in politics in the public sphere. As a result, women are more reluctant to express personal opinions when participating in political discussions, are less likely to participate in non-institutional political activities, and tend to be less informed on politics in general. Using data from all five waves of Asian Barometer (2001 - 2020), I examine how gendered stereotype threat affects knowledge and preferences of politics among women in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia during face-to-face survey interviews. Specifically, whether characteristics of the interviewer and presence of others during the interview have a differential effect on survey strategies and responses.

  • 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.