IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/statpp/v17y2026i1p5-17n1006.html

Liberties and Partisanship under Straining US-China Relations

Author

Listed:
  • bin Oslan Afiq

    (Senior Research Fellow, 338821 Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance , Marstallplatz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany)

Abstract

How does support for civil liberties prevail in times of external threat? Simultaneously, how does internal polarisation affect how tightly citizens hold to these liberties? We argue citizens may follow partisanship in evaluating foreign threats, supporting erosion of liberties if co-partisans advocate it in favour of national security. We conduct a survey experiment on a representative sample of 3281 US citizens, treating them with vignettes of potential conflict with China attributed to randomly varying partisanship. We interact such treatments with respondents’ own partisanship, then measure support for various civil liberties. Our findings yield mixed results and we are unable to decisively demonstrate that co-partisans are better at encouraging the surrender of civil liberties. This is congruent with other recent research that also shows partisan polarisation may neither lighten nor worsen in times of external threat.

Suggested Citation

  • bin Oslan Afiq, 2026. "Liberties and Partisanship under Straining US-China Relations," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 5-17.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:17:y:2026:i:1:p:5-17:n:1006
    DOI: 10.1515/spp-2025-0047
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/spp-2025-0047
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/spp-2025-0047?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Svolik, Milan W., 2020. "When Polarization Trumps Civic Virtue: Partisan Conflict and the Subversion of Democracy by Incumbents," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 15(1), pages 3-31, January.
    2. Myrick, Rachel, 2021. "Do External Threats Unite or Divide? Security Crises, Rivalries, and Polarization in American Foreign Policy," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(4), pages 921-958, April.
    3. Joshua A. Schwartz & Dominic Tierney, 2025. "Us and Them: Foreign Threat and Domestic Polarization," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 69(2-3), pages 352-380, March.
    4. Aksoy, Deniz & Enamorado, Ted & Yang, Tony Zirui, 2024. "Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Chinese Public Support for War," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(2), pages 341-360, February.
    5. Graham, Matthew H. & Svolik, Milan W., 2020. "Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 392-409, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcella Alsan & Luca Braghieri & Sarah Eichmeyer & Minjeong Joyce Kim & Stefanie Stantcheva & David Y. Yang, 2023. "Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 389-421, October.
    2. Gabriele Gratton & Barton E Lee, 2024. "Liberty, Security, and Accountability: The Rise and Fall of Illiberal Democracies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(1), pages 340-371.
    3. Michael Kurschilgen, 2023. "Moral awareness polarizes people’s fairness judgments," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(2), pages 339-364, August.
    4. Kristin M Bakke & Marianne Dahl & Kit Rickard, 2025. "Conflict exposure and democratic values: Evidence from wartime Ukraine," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 62(5), pages 1376-1392, September.
    5. Alexandra Oprea & Daniel J Stephens, 2025. "A minimal standard of democratic competence," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 24(2), pages 169-190, May.
    6. Risa A. Brooks & Michael A. Robinson & Heidi A. Urben, 2024. "Following Orders or Following the Oath? Assessing Democratic Norm Endorsement Among Service Academy Cadets," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 68(7-8), pages 1279-1306, August.
    7. İpek Çınar, 2021. "Riding the democracy train: incumbent-led paths to autocracy," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 301-325, September.
    8. Drew Cagle & Nicholas T. Davis, 2024. "Civility norm violations and political accountability," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 105(3), pages 832-842, May.
    9. Toshkov, Dimiter & Brummel, Lars & Carroll, Brendan & Yesilkagit, Kutsal, 2024. "Public Policy Attitudes and Political Polarization in the Netherlands," OSF Preprints bz6n9, Center for Open Science.
    10. William G. Nomikos & Dahjin Kim & Gechun Lin, 2025. "American social media users have ideological differences of opinion about the War in Ukraine," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-7, December.
    11. Voelkel, Jan G. & Stagnaro, Michael & Chu, James & Pink, Sophia Lerner & Mernyk, Joseph S. & Redekopp, Chrystal & Ghezae, Isaias & Cashman, Matthew & Adjodah, Dhaval & Allen, Levi, 2023. "Megastudy identifying effective interventions to strengthen Americans’ democratic attitudes," OSF Preprints y79u5, Center for Open Science.
    12. Robert Mickey, 2022. "Challenges to Subnational Democracy in the United States, Past and Present," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 699(1), pages 118-129, January.
    13. Eugen Dimant, 2020. "Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 029, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    14. Ananyev, Maxim & Poyker, Michael, 2022. "Do dictators signal strength with electoral fraud?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    15. Hartmann, Felix & Humphreys, Macartan & Geissler, Ferdinand & Klüver, Heike & Giesecke, Johannes, 2024. "Trading Liberties: Estimating COVID-19 Policy Preferences from Conjoint Data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 285-293.
    16. James N. Druckman & Donald P. Green & Shanto Iyengar, 2023. "Does Affective Polarization Contribute to Democratic Backsliding in America?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 708(1), pages 137-163, July.
    17. repec:osf:socarx:qkg4f_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. repec:osf:osfxxx:y79u5_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Degrave, Anne & Lopez-Peceno, Alejandro & Rozenas, Arturas, 2024. "Peasants into Citizens: Suffrage Expansion and Mass Politics in France," TSE Working Papers 24-1529, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    20. Brummel, Lars & Toshkov, Dimiter, 2024. "When Should Governments Listen to Social Protests? The Effects of Public Support and Outcome Favorability," OSF Preprints neh5u, Center for Open Science.
    21. Kelly Morrison, 2025. "Why voters (sometimes) punish repression," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 62(7), pages 2203-2220, December.
    22. repec:osf:osfxxx:2m6a7_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Forteza, Alvaro & Mussio, Irene & Pereyra, Juan S., 2024. "Can political gridlock undermine checks and balances? A lab experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 108(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:17:y:2026:i:1:p:5-17:n:1006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyterbrill.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.