Cracks in the System
Attraction or Distraction? Impacts of Pro-regime Social Media Comments on Chinese Netizens
Stan Hok-Wui Wong & Jiachen Liang
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite heavy Internet regulations, government critics and political satires are not completely absent in the cyberspace of most authoritarian regimes. Some argue that these regimes deliberately tolerate somewhat critical online comments as a way to monitor mass sentiments. To counterbalance critics’ influences, they often mobilize and amplify pro-regime voices. We empirically examine whether such pro-regime voices succeed in changing public opinions in favor of the authorities. Based on two online surveys and an embedded survey experiment that we implemented in China, we find that when given a choice, our Chinese respondents self-select to expose themselves to comments that deviate from the official discourses. In addition, exposure to diverse comments undermines individuals’ policy support. The findings call into question the effectiveness of the “soft propaganda” that authoritarian regimes orchestrate in cyberspace.
Authoritarian Rallying as Reputational Cascade? Evidence from Putin’s Popularity Surge after Crimea
Henry Hale
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
When international conflict causes an authoritarian leader’s popularity to soar, extant theories lead us to treat such “rallying” as sincere preference change, the product of surging patriotism or cowed media. This study advances a theory of less-than-fully sincere rallying more appropriate for nondemocratic settings, characterizing it as at least partly reflecting cascading dissembling driven by social desirability concerns. The identification strategy combines a rare nationally representative rally-spanning panel survey with a list experiment and econometric analysis. This establishes that three quarters of those who rallied to Putin after Russia annexed Crimea were engaging in at least some form of dissembling and that this rallying developed as a rapid cascade, with social media joining television in fueling perceptions this was socially desirable.
Looking for Leadership in Historical Context: An Extension of the RIFLE Method of Randomization Inference
Daniel Smith & Thomas Gray
Journal of Historical Political Economy, August 2021, Pages 215-234
Abstract:
A growing literature supports the idea that individual political leaders can have a profound impact on economic and other outcomes. We extend Berry and Fowler's (2021) RIFLE technique to pre-modern historical contexts. First, we demonstrate the technique's applicability to long-duration historical data of the type commonly found in historical research. We revalidate the technique on simulated data to show it performs well in this environment. Second, we illustrate RIFLE's potential using several applications that point to where and when pre-modern leaders exerted influence over outcomes. Specifically, we test the leadership effect of European and English monarchs and ministers on economic growth in the pre-modern period and find no evidence of substantial leadership effects. Finally, we test for leadership effects of Roman emperors on the contracting and expanding borders of the empire and find robust evidence of a leadership role, especially in defense. These results are a first step towards validating the role of leadership in historical outcomes. Many additional avenues for research remain, with interesting new methods for testing the role of leader agency in disparate political contexts.
International Pressure, State Repression, and the Spread of Protest
Mehdi Shadmehr & Raphael Boleslavsky
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze strategic interactions between a state that decides whether to repress activists and the general public that decides whether to protest following repression. The public would like to support activists who demand beneficial reforms, but it is uncertain about both the merit of the activists’ demands and the intentions behind the state’s repression. Multiple equilibria arise, suggesting an important role for social norms, which provides a rationale for the conflicting empirical findings on the determinants of repression and reform. We show that international pressure, which directly reduces the state’s ability to repress, can indirectly increase repression by shifting the public’s belief in favor of the state, thereby reducing its incentive to protest. To protect legitimate activists or promote positive reforms, international pressure must be sufficiently strong. Lukewarm international commitments at best achieve nothing, and at worst crowd out domestic checks on repression, generating the opposite of their intended effects.
Late colonial antecedents of modern democracy
Christian Bjørnskov & Martin Rode
Journal of Institutional Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Claims that colonial political institutions fundamentally affected the probability for democratic governance in the post-colonial period are probably among some of the most contested in institutional analysis. The current paper revisits this literature using a previously unused source of empirical information – the Statesman's Yearbook – on a large number of non-sovereign countries in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Our analysis shows that neither the size of the European population nor the existence of institutions of higher education appear to be important for the subsequent democratisation of countries decolonised during the latter half of the 20th century, while the existence of representative political bodies during the late colonial period clearly predicts the existence and stability of democracy in recent decades. Successful transplants of democracy to former colonies thus seem to crucially depend on whether recipients had time available to experiment around and adjust the imported institutions to local practices.
Balances, Norms and Institutions: Why Elite Politics in the CCP Have Not Institutionalized
Joseph Fewsmith
China Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In recent years, explanations of the Chinese Communist Party's longevity as a ruling party have focused on institutionalization. But a close look at the four leaders of China since 1978 reveal that institutions have remained weak. Of much greater importance have been balances that reflect the informal distribution of power and norms that express agreed-upon Party procedures. Of yet even greater importance have been the efforts of individual leaders to concentrate power in themselves through the appointment of protégés to critical positions. Such leaders also attempt to extend their influence beyond their terms in office through those protégés and their roles as “elders.” Thus, we see a tension between Party norms and the centralizing tendencies of Leninist systems in which the centralizing tendencies usually prevail. With Xi Jinping, we see a far greater personalization of power disrupting the norms and balances existing under previous leaders.
Institutional Foundations of the American Revolution: Legislative Politics in Colonial North America
Nicholas Napolio & Jordan Carr Peterson
Journal of Historical Political Economy, August 2021, Pages 235-257
Abstract:
Historians locate the origins of the American Revolution in an acute displeasure with colonial governing arrangements after the Crown and Parliament pursued a regime of taxation and commercial restrictions following the Seven Years' War despite colonial contributions to the British victory over France. We consider this narrative afresh by bringing modern tools of social scientific research to archival data from the eighteenth century. After digitizing roll call votes for three colonial assemblies, we estimate ideal points for 456 colonial legislators using 1,535 votes from 1743 to 1775. The estimation procedure uncovers a Loyalist–Patriot dimension that explains a substantial proportion of colonial roll call decisions. We validate our estimates by comparing them with primary and secondary sources on the preferences of assemblymen not expressed via roll calls. We find that legislators exhibited remarkable ideological heterogeneity along the Loyalist–Patriot dimension from 1743 onward; that Loyalist policy representation in provincial assemblies increased during the Seven Years' War; and that Loyalists maintained agenda control from the beginning of the conflict with France through the end of the colonial period, suggesting that colonial assemblies were not suitably equipped to advance the ultimate desire among Patriots for political self-determination. Existing colonial institutions were insufficient to meet the growing popularity of ideas of self-determination in British North America.
Authoritarian transparency: China's missing cases in court disclosure
Zhuang Liu et al.
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The question whether authoritarian regimes use transparency initiatives to improve public governance or only to perform window dressing remains open. To address it, we examine a recently promulgated transparency policy in China that mandates public access to all judicial opinions. We find that local courts fail to disclose more than 60% of their opinions in corporate litigation cases, measured against a baseline of publicly listed firms’ disclosure of their litigation, as required and enforced by the securities regulations. Instead of upholding judicial fairness, local courts disclose cases selectively, displaying favoritism and responding to private incentives. Courts are more likely to suppress the publication of their opinions when the firm involved in the litigation is state-owned or is the defendant in its home court, especially in the year before the promotion of the provincial party secretary. We also find that firms whose cases are disclosed by the courts undergo adverse economic consequences, signaling that they have fallen out of favor with the government.
Amusing Ourselves to Loyalty? Entertainment, Propaganda, and Regime Resilience in China
Shouzhi Xia
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Is it possible to form “soft autocracy” that manages citizens by taking away their sense of resistance? This paper suggests that the rise of entertainment media in autocracies enables the rulers to maintain their resilience through a soft approach, thereby avoiding costly heavy-handed measures. Such a soft approach can work because entertainment media, like “fictitious pleasure drugs,” undo audiences’ sophistication so that people are susceptible to autocratic propaganda. By analyzing a Chinese data set, via instrumented regressions, this paper shows that a one standard deviation increase in people’s interest in entertainment media is associated with an increase of almost 20% in both their satisfaction with the current regime and their anti-Western hostility. Furthermore, the findings show a positive relationship between people’s entertainment media interest and their acceptation of indoctrination by state media. In short, entertainment media contribute to China’s regime stability through “amusing ordinary citizens to loyalty.”
Coup Agency and Prospects for Democracy
Holger Albrecht, Kevin Koehler & Austin Schutz
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research note introduces new global data on military coups. Conventional aggregate data so far have conflated two distinct types of coups. Military interventions by leading officers are coups “from above,” characterized by political power struggles within authoritarian elite coalitions where officers move against civilian elites, executive incumbents, and their loyal security personnel. By contrast, power grabs by officers from the lower and middle ranks are coups “from below,” where military personnel outside of the political elite challenge sitting incumbents, their loyalists, and the regime itself. Disaggregating coup types offers leverage to revise important questions about the causes and consequences of military intervention in politics. This research note illustrates that coup attempts from the top of the military hierarchy are much more likely to be successful than coups from the lower and middle ranks of the military hierarchy. Moreover, coups from the top recalibrate authoritarian elite coalitions and serve to sustain autocratic rule; they rarely produce an opening for a democratic transition. Successful coups from below, by contrast, can result in the breakdown of authoritarian regimes and generate an opening for democratic transitions.
Unexpected Rewards of Political Violence: Republican Ex-Prisoners, Seductive Capital, and the Gendered Nature of Heroism
Elena Bergia
Terrorism and Political Violence, September-October 2021, Pages 1378-1398
Abstract:
The public debate on politically-motivated violence tends to be dominated by concerns over the societal impact of this type of violence, and the motivations that push individuals to engage in this damaging and dangerous activity. Lesser attention is generally paid to the benefits that political violence may generate for those involved. In this article, I explore one such benefit with reference to the republican armed struggle in Northern Ireland. Using ethnographic data collected in West Belfast and building on Bourdieu’s theory of capital, I introduce the concept of “seductive capital.” Seductive capital was acquired by some male republican volunteers by virtue of their involvement in the armed struggle and the republican prison struggles for political status. Strictly associated with the heroic status of ex-prisoners in nationalist communities, seductive capital could be used upon release to facilitate access to women for occasional encounters or long-term relationships. Unlike male ex-prisoners, female ex-prisoners do not appear to have acquired seductive capital. The article explores the gendered nature of seductive capital in Northern Ireland, showing its connection with anti-colonial traditions, constructs of masculinity and femininity in nationalist discourses, and widespread views on gender that resonate with other social and geographical contexts.