Marlene Mauk - Citizen Support for Democratic and Autocratic Regimes

This book has been in the making for many years, starting out as work on my dissertation and progressing into a book for almost two years after I finished my PhD. During this period, a great number of people have helped me develop the core ideas of this book, conduct the research therein, and present the findings in a clear and coherent fashion. I would like to gratefully acknowledge my intellectual and other relevant debts to these people.

I am most grateful to Edeltraud Roller, my dissertation advisor, for spending hours on end discussing the core ideas presented in this book and to ensure my work would be as rigorous as possible. My work has benefited greatly from her sharp mind and I deeply appreciate all the advice she was happy to offer even long after I had graduated.

During my time at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and, subsequently, at GESISLeibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Cologne, many colleagues have had their share in helping me write this book. I consider myself lucky to work in such stimulating environments and with such wonderful colleagues. I would particularly like to acknowledge the assistance and support of the following: Stephanie Bergbauer, for reading the entire manuscript and for offering both insightful comments on the core arguments and incredibly helpful stylistic advice; Nils Steiner, my longest-standing office mate, for listening to my ramblings and helping me straighten out my thoughts on countless occasions; Carl Berning, Jasmin Fitzpatrick, Sven Hillen, Mathias Lotz, and Kati Schiefer, for lending me their ears with any questions and grievances I might have had; and Heidi Schulze, for having my back whenever time was scarce and workload was high. Your unrelenting support and friendship has been invaluable to me.

I am further indebted to Theresa Bernemann, Ayse Gn, and Tizian Lehnert for providing excellent research assistance and helping me organize literature, recode data, format tables, and check references.

I would also like to thank Chris Welzel for offering his endorsement and guidance during the proposal stage, and Ingvill C. Mochmann for her helpful advice during revisions. Special thanks go to Jrgen W. Falter, who introduced me to political-culture research early on, and to Gerd Mielke, who has always been there when it mattered.

The book is based on public opinion surveys conducted by six large-scale research programs as well as aggregate data from a number of sources. I am deeply indebted to the following organizations and individuals for collecting this data and for making it publicly available: Afrobarometer; AmericasBarometer/LAPOP; Arab Barometer; Asian Barometer Project; Latinobarmetro; World Values Survey; Varieties-of-Democracy Institute; Freedom House; World Bank; The Quality of Government Institute; Frederick Solt; The Political Terror Scale Project/Mark Gibney, Linda Cornett, Reed M. Wood, Peter Haschke, and Daniel Arnon; Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat, and Romain Wacziarg; United Nations Development Programme; United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Oxford University Press has been an indispensable source of support. I would especially like to thank Dominic Byatt for providing guidance and reassurance throughout the entire process, and Sathiya Krishnamoorthy for her assistance in the publishing process, as well as Duncan Baylis for his thorough copy-editing. I would also like to express my gratitude to two anonymous reviewers, who took the time to read the entire manuscript and provide me with substantive comments and valuable suggestions for revision; their feedback much improved the book. My greatest appreciation goes out to Ferdinand Mller-Rommel. This entire publishing project would have been impossible without his unwavering support and encouragement.