——理论机制与实证检验
周强 周英慧
【摘 要】民众的政治态度或曰民意对于政治过程和公共政策的制定有至关重要的作用，民意与政治的关系是政治学研究的热点之一。传统的社会经济地位决定论从资产所有权的角度对社会成员的政治态度做过大量的论述，其观点之一认为有产者会更倾向于社会的稳定和更少的财富再分配。然而，传统理论对于资产专用性的作用尚未给予足够的关注。资产专用性可以理解为一种资产在短期内从现有形态转变为具有最高流动性的现金的能力。本文通过理论分析阐释了资产专用性会如何影响民众对于社会稳定和民主决策的态度，发现拥有专用性资产能够显著提高人们维护组织稳定的倾向和降低人们对民主化决策的支持程度，这是因为组织稳定和决策过程更具参与性分别会保持和降低专用性资产的价值。本文将房产视为专用性资产的典型，利用《北京市经济社会发展2017年度调查》（BAS2017）的数据进行实证分析并验证了理论假说。
【关键词】资产专用性；政治态度；社会稳定；民主决策
Abstract: Public opinions or political attitudes of the people are critical to political process and public policy-making, studies on such topics constitute a fertile area for political science research. Socio-economic status (SES) theories on political attitudes have traditionally emphasized asset ownership. They argue asset owners tend to favor social stability and less redistributive policies. However, traditional theories have not paid enough attention to asset specificity, which is defined as the ability of an asset to convert in short term from its current form to cash, which has the highest mobility. We elaborate on the theoretical mechanisms about how asset specificity can affect people’s attitudes toward social stability and democratic decision-making, and predict that ownership of specific assets would significantly increase citizens’ preference for social stability, while significantly decrease citizens’ support for democratic decision-making. Using 2017 Beijing Area Study (BAS) survey data, we are able to confirm these predictions empirically.
Key words: Asset specificity, Political attitudes, Social stability, Democratic decision-making