Too young to be nostalgic?: Young voters and authoritarian nostalgia
In the recent wave of autocratization, nostalgic rhetoric for former dictatorships has mobilized support for authoritarian alternatives around the world. Although previous research has focused on the lived experiences of older voters and their nostalgia, the recent rise in nostalgic politics is attributable to younger voters who share a sentimental longing for the past. What explains the nostalgia generation among younger voters? I focus on three key mechanisms of nostalgia generation among the youth: material incentives, intergenerational transmission, and historical revisionism. Using a mixed-methods approach, I show the declining democratic support among the youth is attributable to authoritarian nostalgia. Analysis of in-person surveys further corroborates the main argument that living in the post-authoritarian contexts provides various resources for nostalgia generation even among those who did not directly experience the past. Findings from this paper call for attention to consistent nostalgia generation and its behavioral implications.