Political Trust for a New Regime: The Case of Immigrants from Non-Democratic Countries in Canada.

We know remarkably little about how immigrants generally feel about the political institutions of the host-country, and we know even less about whether experiences with repressive and non-democratic countries (NDCs) affect immigrants’ orientations towards a new host-country. Using the Canadian case, this paper provides a clearer understanding of how immigrants feel about the new host-regime and what are the underpinnings of immigrants’ regime support. The evidence is that immigrants from NDCs exhibit overwhelming confidence in the political institutions of the Canadian host-country, much more than the local Canadian-born population. We call this overwhelming confidence in political institutions on the part of immigrants from NDCs, a honeymoon effect. The honeymoon effect appears to reflect both an abundance of ‘specific’ and ‘diffuse’ support. First, the abundance of ‘specific’ support appears to flow from the fact that immigrants from NDCs and people born in Canada are evaluating differently the performance of Canadian institutions. Immigrants from NDCs express more satisfaction with the performance of Canadian institutions than people born in Canada, and these more positive evaluations lead them to have greater confidence in the political institutions. Secondly, the analysis shows that immigrants from NDCs exhibit higher levels of confidence than people born in Canada even after controlling for evaluations of institutional performance. This suggests that upon arrival in Canada immigrants from NDCs bring with them a ‘reservoir’ of diffuse support that is independent of how well, or poorly, the regime performs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]