Authoritarian Responsiveness: Evidence from China

Thursday, March 31, 2016
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Pacific)

Speaker:

Jennifer Pan

Abstract:

A growing body of research suggests that authoritarian regimes are responsive to societal actors, but we know little about the sources and limitations of authoritarian responsiveness because of the challenges of measurement and causal identification. This seminar will focus on the results of two new studies---a survey experiment among 1,377 provincial and city-level leaders in China and an online field experiment among 2,103 Chinese counties---to examine factors that influence officials’ incentives to respond to citizens in the absence of electoral competition. These studies show that the threat of collective action causes county governments to be considerably more responsive, and to be more publicly responsive. However, the manifestation of collective action and social contention decreases officials' willingness to be receptive to societal input. Together these results demonstrate that bottom-up societal pressure is a possible source of authoritarian responsiveness, but one with substantial restrictions.

Speaker Bio:

Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the strategies authoritarian regimes employ to perpetuate their rule, including censorship, redistribution, and responsiveness, and how technology facilitates and hinders these strategies. Her work focuses primarily on China, and uses computational and experimental methods to measure and examine different components of these strategies.

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