Selective Partisan Tolerance among Taiwanese youth: civic awareness, political trust and policy resistance

This study develops Selective Partisan Tolerance as an integrative analytical framework to examine the associations between civic awareness, political trust and youth policy resistance in Taiwan. Drawing on original survey data from 1,632 university students collected in early 2021, the analysis distinguishes between economic and trade-related policy opposition, domestic reform opposition and protest participation. Results show that, within the broader framework of policy resistance, civic awareness is positively associated with opposition to economic and trade policies but negatively associated with opposition to domestic reforms, suggesting domain-specific patterns in how civic awareness relates to policy opposition. Importantly, civic awareness is conditionally associated with partisan identity: its negative association with domestic reform opposition is attenuated among Pan-Blue supporters, while its positive association with protest participation is attenuated among Pan-Green supporters. Political trust is negatively associated with policy opposition, though its relationship varies across institutional dimensions. These findings suggest that civic awareness does not operate as a uniformly democratizing force but functions conditionally across policy domains and partisan alignments. The study extends civic culture and motivated reasoning theories by situating civic engagement within Taiwan’s polarized democracy and offers practical insights for civic education and democratic governance in divided societies.