Dissertation & Book Project:
Whose Voice Matters? Loyalists, Dissidents, and Responsiveness in China
Why do dictators lacking electoral incentives invest in deliberative institutions designed to respond to citizen appeals? An emerging literature on authoritarian responsiveness contends that dictators prioritize the requests of regime dissidents. Instead, I argue that authoritarian regimes strategically maneuver responses of different qualities to different segments of population for social control. Specifically, officials selectively provide substantive responses——responses that resolve the problems of citizens—--to people who show higher conformity to the regime in order to signal to the public that political obedience is rewarded with real benefits. On the other hand, officials selectively provide symbolic responses—--responses that are rhetorical without solving the problems—--to potential organized opposition to appease dissidents and avoid incentivizing more oppositional behaviors.
The first half of my dissertation is dedicated to testing this pattern of selective responsiveness in the Chinese setting. To do so, I use qualitative interviews, analysis of primary government documents, digital ethnography, and computational methods on an original database of over 156,000 citizen appeals and official responses from the government-run accounts on Weibo (Chinese equivalent of Twitter). I find that within the same topic of appeal, a better record of conforming to the Chinese regime’s surveillance and censorship policies on Weibo significantly increases the likelihood of obtaining a substantive response from local governments. In contrast, more comments and support from other citizens on an appeal only increases its chance of getting a symbolic response. Local officials report that they perform this selective responsiveness primarily to inform petitioners and potential petitioners that compliance, not organized opposition, will open doors for satisfying their demands. These results suggest the need to re-conceptualize accountability under autocracy not only as a reactive approach to appease opposition, but also as a proactive strategy to cultivate conformity. My findings also extend the logic of authoritarian distribution beyond elections to public deliberation in the digital age.
The second half of the dissertation investigates how these online deliberative institutions shape citizen behaviors and political participation. The theory implies that over time, the regime’s selective responsiveness should elicit more conformist behaviors among citizens. To test this idea, I construct a second, original database of citizen online speeches before and after they submit the first appeal to the government on Weibo. Using a difference-in-difference design combined with a matching strategy, I find that obtaining a substantive response motivates citizens to speak more positively of the regime and increase appeals through government-run channels. Receiving a symbolic response or no response motivates citizens to speak more negatively of the regime initially, but after three months, this oppositional expression decreases to a level lower than that before the appeal. This suggests that over time, citizens do get the signal from officials’ selective responses and exhibit more conformity for a better response. That said, the failure to obtain substantive response also motivates citizens to reduce appeals through government-run channels and seek more coordination with other societal actors (e.g. journalists, opinion leaders on Weibo) for political petitions, which has the potential to destabilize the regime in the long term.
Whose Voice Matters? Loyalists, Dissidents, and Responsiveness in China
Why do dictators lacking electoral incentives invest in deliberative institutions designed to respond to citizen appeals? An emerging literature on authoritarian responsiveness contends that dictators prioritize the requests of regime dissidents. Instead, I argue that authoritarian regimes strategically maneuver responses of different qualities to different segments of population for social control. Specifically, officials selectively provide substantive responses——responses that resolve the problems of citizens—--to people who show higher conformity to the regime in order to signal to the public that political obedience is rewarded with real benefits. On the other hand, officials selectively provide symbolic responses—--responses that are rhetorical without solving the problems—--to potential organized opposition to appease dissidents and avoid incentivizing more oppositional behaviors.
The first half of my dissertation is dedicated to testing this pattern of selective responsiveness in the Chinese setting. To do so, I use qualitative interviews, analysis of primary government documents, digital ethnography, and computational methods on an original database of over 156,000 citizen appeals and official responses from the government-run accounts on Weibo (Chinese equivalent of Twitter). I find that within the same topic of appeal, a better record of conforming to the Chinese regime’s surveillance and censorship policies on Weibo significantly increases the likelihood of obtaining a substantive response from local governments. In contrast, more comments and support from other citizens on an appeal only increases its chance of getting a symbolic response. Local officials report that they perform this selective responsiveness primarily to inform petitioners and potential petitioners that compliance, not organized opposition, will open doors for satisfying their demands. These results suggest the need to re-conceptualize accountability under autocracy not only as a reactive approach to appease opposition, but also as a proactive strategy to cultivate conformity. My findings also extend the logic of authoritarian distribution beyond elections to public deliberation in the digital age.
The second half of the dissertation investigates how these online deliberative institutions shape citizen behaviors and political participation. The theory implies that over time, the regime’s selective responsiveness should elicit more conformist behaviors among citizens. To test this idea, I construct a second, original database of citizen online speeches before and after they submit the first appeal to the government on Weibo. Using a difference-in-difference design combined with a matching strategy, I find that obtaining a substantive response motivates citizens to speak more positively of the regime and increase appeals through government-run channels. Receiving a symbolic response or no response motivates citizens to speak more negatively of the regime initially, but after three months, this oppositional expression decreases to a level lower than that before the appeal. This suggests that over time, citizens do get the signal from officials’ selective responses and exhibit more conformity for a better response. That said, the failure to obtain substantive response also motivates citizens to reduce appeals through government-run channels and seek more coordination with other societal actors (e.g. journalists, opinion leaders on Weibo) for political petitions, which has the potential to destabilize the regime in the long term.