How democratic is government really? The impact of subnational regime variation on evaluations of democracy
研究地方层面的民主程度如何影响民众对整体民主的评价，发现生活在选举民主得分高的地区的人更可能认为选举未被操纵、人权受保护、国家是民主的。
Abstract Democracy is not an exclusively national concept, and subnational governments vary in respect for democratic norms and institutions. In subnational authoritarian enclaves, incumbents manipulate elections using fraud, corruption, institutional manipulation, or repression to maintain power. While we know a fair amount about how these authoritarian enclaves form and democratize, we know much less about how they affect the people that live in them. Does subnational democracy influence evaluations of democratic performance? I argue that individuals incorporate subnational outcomes into overall evaluations of democracy, and that subnational democracy positively influences these evaluations. To test this argument, I combine a new measure of subnational democracy, the Subnational Electoral Democracy Scale, with the fifth and sixth waves of the World Values Survey. I find that people living in states with high electoral democracy scores are likely to believe that elections are not manipulated, human rights are protected, and that their country is democratic.