Nationalism, Democratic Norms, and Welfare Preferences: A Comparative Study of Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, China

This study investigates how two dimensions of national identity—attachment and pride—relate to support for social justice across four dimensions: deliberative democracy, rule of law, redistributive justice, and the welfare state. Using survey data from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, China, I assess whether national identity strengthens or weakens commitment to democratic norms and egalitarian policy preferences. Results show robust positive associations between both dimensions and support for deliberative democracy in the two societies, suggesting that national identity can bolster democratic norms. In contrast, support for the rule of law—proxied by lower justification of tax cheating—is negatively related to identity in Hong Kong SAR for both attachment and pride, and in Taiwan region for pride only, indicating that pride may align with system legitimation or moral permissiveness rather than legal compliance in specific contexts, meanwhile, the rule of law tradition of society also plays an important role as the context. Redistributive justice and welfare state supports exhibit no positive associations with nationalism; in Hong Kong SAR, national pride is negatively related to both, consistent with welfare chauvinism or status-quo justification. These findings underscore that the “national identity argument” is context- and dimension-dependent, with pride yielding clearer and more divergent empirical patterns than attachment. I discuss implications for theorising identity’s mechanisms and for understanding how regime environments and recent political events shape the identity–attitude nexus in East Asia. The study contributes to comparative research on nationalism and political attitudes by separating national identity facets, specifying outcome domains, and providing cross-societal evidence from two pivotal cases.