Tag: populism
Democratic Backsliding and Electoral Autocracies: Research Shared at the 2023 FROMDEE Conference
On October 13th, 2023, the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe (FROMDEE) hosted an academic conference on “Democratic Backsliding and Electoral Autocracies”. This brief provides a short summary of the keynote lecture and research presentations featured at the conference.
The most recent report by the V-Dem Institute concludes that “72 percent of the world’s population […] live in autocracies by 2022” and “the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2022 is down to 1986 levels” (V-Dem Institute, 2023). In Europe, these declines have manifested in the previous Polish government undermining judicial independence, in tightened political repression in Belarus, and most prominently in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But the rise of electoral autocracies and democratic backsliding are not confined to Europe – their strategies of propaganda, corruption, electoral manipulation, as well as attacks on judicial and media independence are a global phenomenon. The October 13th FROMDEE Conference gathered researchers from economics, law and political science to bring insight into why and where reversals are taking place, and what measures are needed to reverse the negative trend. This policy brief provides an overview of the research shared at the conference.
Populism and Autocracy – the Case of Russia
In the keynote lecture, Arturas Rozenas (New York University) focused on the roots of populism, challenging the common view of illiberal democracies as a mix between democracies and dictatorships. Rather, dictatorships evolve into populist dictatorships that then take one of two paths: either the path to democracy, or the path towards electoral autocracy, illiberal democracy, or totalitarianism. In this framework, populist dictatorships have historically made use of populist elements we recognize from modern times, i.e., democratic-seeming institutions misused for the ruler’s purposes.
In a populist dictatorship, Rozenas continued, there is a monopoly of power. Institutions such as elections and parliamentary representation, serve not to allocate power but to legitimise it. The transition from passive to active dictatorships coincided with a move away from the common notion of a king or similar leader deriving rightful power from God to rule the masses, to a reality built on the idea that the ruler’s legitimacy stems from the masses. This historic transformation should however not be interpreted as a transition to democracy. In fact, Rozenas showed that for most of recent history, the majority of elections and expansions of suffrage took place in dictatorships rather than in democracies. These seemingly populist institutions serve not only to legitimise governments, but also to coopt the population in a public display of the ruler’s strength. Rozenas argued, that in an active populist dictatorship, the ruler creates a setting which suppresses dissent and expectations of dissent, through institutionalised expressions of support (in the form of political participation, elections, large rallies etc.).
Turning to the Russian setting, the first thing to notice is the deep tradition of autocracy – from tsarism to Stalinism. In Russia, the words “society” and “the people” briefly blossomed during past revolutions or uprisings but have largely been absent in the Russian language and are once again on the decline under the rule of Putin. Further, the Russian population has time and again been exploited by its rulers during succession crises for displays of power and dominance. Examples of this are the mandatory elections held under Stalin two weeks after the invasion of the Baltic States in 1939 and more recently under Putin in the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk in Ukraine in 2021. Such populist autocratic strategies are nothing new in Russia, concluded Rozenas – rather they derive from the internal logic of dictatorship that has played out throughout Russian history.
Continuing the notion of the “absent” Russian society, Olha Zadorozhna (Kozminski University) began her presentation by explaining that protests are infrequent in Russia and have surprisingly few attendees given the country’s large population. While there were mass protests in the run-up to the collapse of communism in the 1980’s and protests took place against corruption in 2017-2018, and in relation to the arrest of Alexey Navalny in 2021, protests in Russia are typically not motivated by an overarching ideology or broader political questions. Rallies in favor of authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism are a more common occurrence. Moreover, there are few indications that the invasion of Ukraine, sanctions and subsequent economic downturn have negatively affected the Russian population’s support for the regime. Still, literature has shown that war-related deaths can mobilize opposition against war participation (e.g., the U.S. participation in the Vietnam War). Considering this, Zadorozhna evaluates whether the deaths of Russian soldiers provoke a reaction among the Russian population. By combining social media data on fallen soldiers with protest activity for the first four months of the Russian invasion in 2022, the study find that casualties lead to an increase in protest activity, indicating that deaths can in fact mobilize public opposition in Russia.
Other populist strategies to ensure support for Putin in Russia relate to political participation and the judiciary. Nicholas James (University of Oxford) analysed electoral rule changes in the Russian Duma – from mixed member majoritarianism to proportional representation (PR) – by measuring their effect on floor participation. Applying a difference-in-differences framework, James found that deputies experiencing a change from PR included less words in their speeches following the switch (about 15-20 percent of an average speech). This effect should be understood in the political context of the ruling party’s (United Russia) increased influence during this time period (2010s). In fact, James concluded, the results point in the direction of the regime tampering with the Duma in an impromptu and reactionary manner with the overall goal of obtaining closer control and the appearance of support for the regime.
Yulia Khalikova’s (University of Hamburg) presentation gave further insight into how ostensibly democratic institutions can be exploited to make an authoritarian regime appear legitimate. In her work, Khalikova considers judicial references to international law that may be employed strategically, without necessarily adhering to the spirit or content of the law. Looking specifically at international law citations in 601 judgements made in the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) between 2000 and 2021, Khalikova find evidence that the RCC has increasingly cited international courts when making judgements on topics related to politics and physical rights, indicating that state policy influences citation patterns. The change in citation patterns also points to the RCC currently using international law to support the regime and uphold its legitimacy, meaning that international law – adopted with the ambition of enhancing democratic values and ensuring human rights – is misused for undemocratic and repressive purposes.
Censorship and Propaganda
Information control is an important feature of autocratic regimes. Philine Widmer (ETH Zurich) considers the Chinese setting – where the regime controls the amount of foreign information available on the internet via a countrywide firewall. Research has shown that autocracies make use of censorship strategies to control their citizens, but these are associated with high reputational costs and can be overcome by tech-savvy citizens. Using a machine learning algorithm, Widmer first predicts a newspaper article’s alignment with the Chinese regime before comparing the placement of more/less aligned articles on news websites. Her results show that front-page news stories in Chinese newspapers are more aligned with the regime’s stance than other content. Front-page placement in turn matters for information uptake. Widmer ended the presentation by comparing the additional cost of finding less aligned articles to the technological costs required to access outside media (e.g. VPNs). For an autocracy to achieve its information control objectives, independent news may just need to be relatively harder to access. It does not need to make it impossible to access for all citizens.
Censorship is typically accompanied by, and complementary with, propaganda. Restricting other narratives allows autocratic regimes to spread their own. While propaganda is a common feature within autocracies, Jaakko Meriläinen’s (Stockholm School of Economics) presentation evaluated the effect of autocratic propaganda in a democratic setting.
Meriläinen’s study focuses on a rogue experiment in which some Finnish children in the 1970’s were taught history and social sciences using material from the Soviet Union – material which was in essence Soviet propaganda. By exploiting geographical and cohort variation, Meriläinen use a difference-in-differences approach to compare the 213 exposed children to children taught the regular Finnish curriculum. The long-term outcomes show that exposed children had lower incomes in adulthood, worked fewer months per year and were engaged in more left-leaning and publicly beneficial occupations (such as, nurses and firefighters).
Information and Accountability
The use of technological innovations to access otherwise restricted information was central to Arieda Muço’s (Central European University) presentation. She studies the spread of the Xerox photocopying machine in communist Hungary in the 1980’s – a setting characterised by limited freedom of speech and restrictions on the media. She reported that areas with early placement of Xerox machines are found to exhibit higher shares of pro-democratic voting. Muço ascribes these outcomes to the fact that the machines allowed for the spread of information and eased coordination of the opposition, suggesting that new technologies and information can act as key facilitators in the fall of autocratic regimes.
Providing citizens with information was also a key feature in Enrique Seira Bejarano’s (Michigan State University) presentation. He began by discussing two potentially related trends: in Latin America recent years have seen (i) increased levels of corruption and (ii) increased dissatisfaction with democracy among citizens. The number of corruption-related news articles have increased threefold in Spanish and doubled in English and the share of people perceiving corruption to be the greatest challenge to their country has doubled in the last decade. The study uses two empirical strategies to identify the effect of corruption on democratic values. Firstly, Seira Bejarano described an observational study, in which data on major corruption scandals were combined with Latinobarometer data on support for democracy. The authors find that corruption scandals increase corruption perceptions while decreasing stated support for democracy. Secondly, Seira Bejarano reported the results of a randomized controlled trial in which some respondents were shown videos of a politician accepting bribes. This had a negative effect on preferences for democracy and on trust more broadly. Both studies show that revelations of corruptions decrease the support for democracy, suggesting a potential tradeoff between the public’s belief in democratic institutions and increased transparency which is important for accountability but can also expose corruption.
Right-wing Populism
Yet another threat to democracy is the rise of right-wing populism – currently a reality in many well-established democracies across Europe. In Germany, the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) enjoys around 21 percent of voters’ support according to recent polls. To understand their rise in popularity, Navid Sabet (Goethe University Frankfurt) builds on previous literature on cultural conflict as a driver for right-wing party support. The paper he presented examines the role of violent conflict in the form of terrorist acts. It evaluates whether acts of terror can alter the political landscape and shift support to the far-right. To avoid selection problems, the authors compare successful terror attacks to attacks that failed. Sabet reported that successful small-scale attacks (predominantly targeting migrants) increase AfD’s vote share by about 6 percentage points in state elections (in the time period 2013-2021). The acts of terror were found to increase voter turnout, by mobilizing otherwise idle voters, but also by gaining votes at the cost of other parties. Exploring the mechanisms behind these results, the authors study the language used by political parties and the way successful attacks were covered in the media. Relative to coverage of unsuccessful attacks, media coverage used a more negative tone, more words related to Islam and terror and fewer words related to right-wing populism. This suggests that media plays an important role in shaping the public’s response to acts of terror and that far right parties are able to exploit this dynamic.
Concluding Remarks
The 2023 FROMDEE Conference brought together academics from different fields to shed light on some of the main challenges to democracy today. In part, the research presented supported the prevailing narrative that democracies are backsliding in many parts of the world. However, by analysing how autocracies and populist leaders operate, the presenters also highlighted the vulnerability of dictatorships.
Arturas Rozenas cited the example of a rally in Bucharest in 1989, which was organised to display support for Ceauşescu’s regime and descended into an anti-government protest. Dictatorships can benefit by coopting the populist elements of democracy but, in doing so, they risk creating a vehicle for genuine democratic expression.
The audience learned about autocracies’ efforts to control the flow of information but also about citizens’ ability to circumvent restrictions whether in 1980s Hungary or present-day China. Several presentations focused on the extent of autocratic control in Russia but even in this setting, the death of soldiers in Ukraine motivates citizens to participate in protests.
Recent trends suggest that democratic institutions should not be taken for granted in any country. Societies can become more resilient to the threat of democratic backsliding, in part by better understanding how both democracies and autocracies operate and what makes them vulnerable. Researchers around the world are using innovative methods to expand our knowledge in this area, as reflected in the presentations at the 2023 FROMDEE Conference.
References
- V-Dem Institute. (2023). Defiance in the Face of Autocratization. Democracy Report 2023. University of Gothenburg. Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem Institute). https://www.v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Political Implications of the Rise of Mobile Broadband Internet
In the last ten years, the world has experienced the dramatic rise of mobile broadband internet brought by third-generation (3G) and fourth-generation (4G) mobile networks. This has resulted in major political changes – reduced confidence in governments around the world, lower voting shares of incumbent political parties, and the rise of populists. The empirical evidence is consistent with both the optimistic view of 3G internet (the “Liberation Technology”) and the pessimistic one (the “Disinformation Technology”). 3G internet helps to expose actual corruption; however, it also contributes to electoral successes of populist opposition.
The Spectacular Rise of 3G
Communication technologies have undergone a dramatic change in the last 10-15 years. According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), there were only 4 active mobile broadband subscriptions per hundred people in the world in 2007, while this number reached 75 per hundred in 2020. The growth of mobile broadband internet – provided by the third and fourth generation of mobile networks (3G and 4G, respectively) – was the main driver of growth in broadband access. The number of fixed broadband subscriptions per hundred people has only increased from 5 to 15 percent in the same period of time.
Relative to the previous generations of mobile technology, 3G provides a qualitatively different way of using the internet. First, it is broadband access on the go, available wherever the user is rather than at a fixed point at home or in the office. Second, it allows for downloading and uploading photos and videos. Before 3G, mobile technology only allowed exchanging text messages along with limited and slow access to the web. Third, it is the technology that is best suited for social media. While social networks started before 3G and were initially accessed on fixed broadband, today most Facebook, Twitter and YouTube users are mobile.
Liberation Technology or Disinformation Technology?
What are the political implications of the spread of this new technology around the world? Initially, political scientists were excited about the internet as a “Liberation Technology”, especially after it played an important role in the Arab Spring. Internet – and in particular mobile internet –helped pro-democracy activists in autocratic states to disseminate critical information about the government, expose corruption, and coordinate protests.
Later on, however, it became clear that social media also provided a platform for the dissemination of false news and hate speech – thus supporting the rise of populists. This led to a rethinking of the role of mobile internet – and rechristening it into a “Disinformation Technology.”
Which view, the optimistic or the pessimistic one, is correct? In Guriev et al. (2021), we study the impact of the expansion of 3G around the world on attitudes to government and electoral outcomes.
Exposing Actual Corruption
In order to explore the effects on confidence in government, we use data from Gallup World Poll surveys of 840,537 individuals from 2,232 subnational regions in 116 countries from 2008 to 2017. In each region and year we calculate the population-weighted average access to mobile broadband relying on the network coverage data from Collins Bartholomew’s Mobile Coverage Explorer.
First, we find that increased access to 3G internet causes lower confidence in government, judiciary, honesty of elections, and a lower belief that the government is not corrupt. As shown in Figure 1, the magnitudes are substantial. In our paper, we show that a decade-long 3G expansion has the same effect on government approval as a 2.2 percentage-point rise in the national unemployment rate.
Figure 1. Mobile Broadband Access and Government Approval.
Source: Guriev et al. (2021), Table 1, authors’ calculations.
This effect is only present when there is no online censorship and stronger when traditional media are not free. Furthermore, the spread of 3G makes people think that the government is corrupt when the actual corruption is high. In the cleanest countries of the world, the effect is actually positive – better access to information may help citizens to understand that other countries are much more corrupt relative to their own.
This positive impact is, however, limited to about 10% of the world’s countries. On average, the effect of 3G on the perception that government is clean is negative (see Figure 1). There are two potential explanations. First, as suggested by Gurriv (2018), before the arrival of the fast internet, the elites controlled the media and, as a result, the public was not fully aware of the elites’ corruption. 3G helped to expose this corruption and corrected the pre-3G positive bias. The second explanation is related to the negative bias of social media where critical messages spread faster and deeper (see the references in Guriev et al. 2021).
Another potential explanation is that social media promote overall negative and pessimistic attitudes. We show that this conjecture is not consistent with the evidence: the spread of 3G does not reduce life satisfaction or expected future life satisfaction.
Helping European Populists
The evidence above is consistent with the view that mobile broadband internet and social media help to expose misgovernance and corruption. These findings are in line with the optimistic view of mobile broadband internet as a “Liberation Technology.” However, it turns out that the pessimistic view of “Disinformation Technology” may also be correct.
We examine the impact of 3G expansion on the outcomes of 102 parliamentary elections in 33 European democracies between 2007 and 2018. Using subnational data, we show that the spread of 3G, not surprisingly, decreases the vote share of incumbents substantially (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The impact of 3G expansion on incumbent vote share in Europe.
Source: Guriev et al. (2021), Figure VIII.
Figure 3. The impact of 3G expansion on opposition vote share in Europe.
Source: Guriev et al. (2021), Figure IX.
If incumbents lose votes, who picks them up? We show that the main beneficiaries of 3G expansion are the populist opposition parties, both on the left and right (Figure 3). The non-populist opposition does not gain.
Why do populists benefit from the spread of mobile broadband and social media? One explanation is that social media is decentralized and has no entry barriers. It is not the first time in history that populist politicians have relied on new communication technology to circumvent mainstream media controlled by the elites (e.g. the US late 19thcentury populists used telegraph and railroads, the Nazis in Germany used radio). It may also be the case that populist messages may be simpler, and thus, better suited for a short and catchy communication on social media. For example, another pan-European family of anti-system parties, the Greens, do not benefit from the spread of the 3G internet at all (see Figure 3): their narrative is more complex, asking voters to take responsibility for the planet.
Fact-Checking Alternative Facts
Many populist politicians point to actual corruption of the incumbent elites, but some also spread false narratives or “alternative facts.” (It was Donald Trump’s Counselor Kellyanne who, in January 2017, when asked to comment on false statements by Trump’s Press-Secretary about his inauguration, famously said that these were not falsehoods but “alternative facts.”) What can be done to stop the dissemination of these falsehoods on social media? Can fact-checking by mainstream media and independent organizations help?
In two studies, Barrera et al. (2020) and Henry et al. (2021), we carry out two randomized online experiments to identify the causal effects of alternative facts spread by populist politicians and their fact-checking. The findings are as follows: (i) alternative facts are highly persuasive; (ii) fact-checking helps to correct factual beliefs – but do not change voting intentions; even though the voters understand that the populists misrepresent the facts, they still support their agenda; (iii) fact-checking, however, substantially reduces sharing of alternative facts on social media; (iv) the impact of fact-checking on sharing is equally strong regardless of whether the users are forced to view the fact-checking information or are simply given an option to click on a fact-checking link; (v) asking users to re-confirm their intention to share alternative facts with an additional click greatly reduces sharing.
Our results suggest that fact-checking may not be as effective as fact-checkers themselves hope, but can help slow down the dissemination of falsehoods on social media. Furthermore, our analysis delivers clear policy implications – both providing fact-checking (even in the form of accompanying alternative facts with fact-checking links) and requiring additional clicks before sharing can be very effective.
Conclusion
The findings from our analysis of the worldwide spread of mobile broadband internet in the last decade are consistent with both optimistic and pessimistic views. On the one hand, 3G internet does help expose actual corruption. On the other hand, it helps populist opposition to gain votes. Likely, the latter result is eventually due to the populists’ abuse of online platforms for spreading disinformation. We show that the propagation of falsehoods on social media can be at least partially slowed down by fact-checking.
References
- Guriev, Sergei & Nikita, Melnikov & Ekaterina, Zhuravskaya, 2021 “3G Internet and Confidence in Government.” Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
- Barrera, Oscar, Sergei Guriev, Emeric Henry & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2020. “Facts, Alternative Facts, and Fact Checking in Times of Post-Truth Politics.” Journal of Public Economics, 182: 104123.
- Gurri, Martin, 2018. The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. 2nd edition. San Francisco, CA: Stripe Press.
- Henry, Emeric & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya & Sergei Guriev, 2021. “Checking and Sharing Alt-Facts.”
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
The Political Economics of Long Run Development in Eastern Europe: Insights from the 2019 SITE Academic Conference
Thirty years after the fall of communism, many assume that the economic transition of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet States towards a system of market economy is complete. But the region faces new challenges, of both economic and political kind, which renders a thorough understanding the past even more important. This policy brief is based on the scientific contributions presented at the 7th SITE Academic Conference held at the Stockholm School of Economics from December 16th to December 17th, 2019. Organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), the conference brought together academics from all over Europe and the United States to share and discuss their research on economic and political development in Eastern Europe.
The Imperial and Soviet Periods
In the first section of the conference, papers with a focus on the long-term history of Eastern Europe and its implications for more recent events were presented. Marvin Suesse presented his research on how the Russian State Bank financed Tsarist Russia´s belated industrialization, a question that had been discussed by historians, but never thoroughly analyzed quantitatively. By geo-coding historical manufacturing censuses around the turn of the century and using distance between bank branches and factory location, the causal impact of the expansion of the State Bank is estimated, revealing large effects on firm revenues and productivity. These effects are largest in areas where alternative means of financing were least available and where human capital was more abundant.
Natalya Naumenko presented her findings on the economic consequences of the 1933 Soviet famine, which in terms of casualties was extremely devastating. She uses the meteorological conditions a year earlier as an instrumental variable and finds that the famine, which was mostly a rural phenomenon, had a persistent negative effect on the urban population while the rural population recovered relatively quickly.
Gerhard Toews discussed the long-term consequences on regional development of the displacement of an estimated 3 million “enemies of the people”, political prisoners typically belonging to the elite of the society, into the gulags in the early years of the Soviet Union. Using archival data, he has constructed a large database describing the gulag population in terms of the shares of “enemies” relative to other prisoners and taking into account their socio-economic characteristics i.e. the much higher levels of education of the former group. Exploiting variation within gulags, the results suggest that a historically higher density of “enemies” means higher economic prosperity today as measured by nightlight intensity.
Taking another angle, Christian Ochsner investigated the effects of the Red Army´s occupation on post-war Europe, using the demarcation line crossing the Austrian state of Styria as a natural experiment. His conclusion is that even the temporary occupation affected the region’s long-term development, the main channel being age-specific migration.
Finally, Andreas Stegman offered an analysis of the effects of the 1972 East German Extended Visitors Program. The program reduced travel restrictions for West German visitors traveling to certain districts of East Germany. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design comparing similar districts with and without the program, he shows that included districts indeed received much more visits from West Germany and that their citizens were more likely to protest against the Communist government and less likely to vote for the ruling party. This suggests that face-to-face interaction can influence beliefs and attitudes in non-democratic regimes, in turn influencing individual behavior and societal outcomes during transition.
Corruption, Conflict and Public Institutions
Another topic of the conference was the current role of corruption, conflict, electoral fraud and public sector effectiveness for the region. Scott Gehlbach presented his most recent research on the ownership patterns and strategies of Ukrainian oligarchs before and after the Orange revolution. By mapping oligarchs to changing political leadership, he shows how firm owners in Ukraine take actions to protect their property depending on their connections with the current government. He finds that obfuscation of ownership behind holding companies and complicated structures is a potentially valuable strategy in this environment in general but becomes particularly important when an oligarch loses direct connections to the ruling regime.
Likewise, Timothy Frye analyzed election subversion by employers in Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey and Nigeria. He finds that in Russia, public sector employers and especially state-owned firms are more likely to influence their employees’ decision to vote than private companies. Furthermore, work place mobilization by employers in Russia is clearly negatively associated with the freedom of the press. Election subversion is more likely to be successful when the degree of dependence of the employee is high and the employer’s potential threats are credible. Among Russian firm officials, the most frequently named motivations for them to practice election subversion are the desire to improve their relationship with the authority and the intention to help their party.
Michal Myck studied the impact of the transition experience on economic development around the Polish-German border. Polish communities close to the border were economically backward at the beginning of the transition but could potentially benefit from trade opportunities with an opening towards the West. Using similar methods to those of Stegman above, and nightlight intensity as a measure of economic activity as for instance Toews, Myck finds significant evidence for economic convergence both between Germany and Poland, and between Polish border regions and the rest of Poland.
Vasily Korovkin presented his research on the impact of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine on trade in non-conflict areas in Ukraine, hypothesizing that the conflict may cause a trade diversion away from Russia, particularly so in areas with many ethnic Ukrainians. Using variation in the share of the Russian speaking population at the county level as well as detailed firm level export and import data, he finds that the decrease in trade with Russia is negatively correlated with the share of the Russian speaking population. Potential mechanisms include a decline in trust at the firm level and changes in local attitudes including consumer boycotts.
Finally, Tetyana Tyshchuk analyzed the effects of a Ukrainian public sector reform on civil servants’ capacity and autonomy. The reform created public policy directorates parallel to the regular bureaucracy in 10 ministries. Members of the directorates were hired based on a different procedure and different merits relative to regular public servants and received significantly higher salaries. Tyshchuk finds that the better paid civil servants indeed score higher on many, though not all, indicators of capacity and autonomy.
Information, Populism and Authoritarianism Today
The final important theme of the conference was the role of information and media, old and new, in today’s politics. In the event´s first keynote speech, Ruben Enikolopov analyzed the political effects of the Internet and social media whose low entry barriers and reliance on user-generated content make them decisively different from traditional media channels. On the one hand, this represents a chance for opposition leaders and whistleblowers to make their voice heard and may improve government accountability. On the other, these media may also become a platform for extremists. Enikolopov presented some of his work analyzing to what extent social media has contributed to fighting corruption in Russia. Using the timings of blog posts by the famous Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on corporate governance violations in state-owned companies, he shows that revelations resulted in an immediate drop in the price of the traded shares of the respective companies. He also finds evidence suggesting that Navalny´s blog posts resulted in management changes in these companies. In related papers, he exploits the spread of VKontakte (VK), the Russian version of Facebook, to better understand the influence of social networks on political activism, voting and the occurrence of hate crime. He finds that the spread of VK is indeed causally related to political protests, though not because it nurtures opposition to the government, but rather because it facilitates protest co-ordination. With respect to hate crime, he finds that social media only has an effect in areas where it falls on fertile grounds and where there already are high levels of nationalism. The tentative conclusion is that in Russia – as in Western countries – social media seems to have increased political polarization.
On a similar topic but taking a more theoretical approach, Galina Zudenkova investigated the link between information and communication technologies (ICT), regime contestation and censorship. In a game theoretical framework, where citizens use ICT both to learn about the competency of the government and to coordinate protests, governments can use different tools to censor information to increase their chances of survival. Zudenkova finds that less competent regimes are more likely to censor coordination, whereas intermediate regimes are more likely to focus on censoring content. These theoretical predictions are then tested using country level data.
The targeted use of information has also played a key role in Putin’s Russia according to Daniel Treisman. In his keynote speech, he argued that while the 20th century dictatorships were mainly based on violence and ideology, the 21st century has been characterized by a sizeable shift towards what he calls “informational autocracy”. Constructing a dataset on the methods used by authoritarian regimes to maintain power between 1946 and 2015, he shows that the use of torture and violence peaked among those dictators who took power in the 1980s and has declined since. Furthermore, he highlights a remarkable shift from topics of violence towards topics of economic competency in dictators’ speeches. However, Treisman finds that by instrumentalizing information, dictators fool the public “but not the elite”. In democratic regimes, those with tertiary education tend to rate their political leaders higher than people without tertiary education. In the new informational authoritarian regime, the opposite seems to be the case. According to Treisman, this is because the “informed elite” has a better understanding of the political reality in places where the media is censored, Putin’s Russia being a good example. Treisman concluded that this new model of authoritarianism has become the prevalent model outside of Europe and today also has its advocates inside the European Union.
The conference ended with a final keynote speech by Sergei Guriev on the political economy of populism. Using existing definitions, he first confirmed that Europe has seen a rise in right-wing populism in the last 20 years. Secular trends, such as globalization and new communication technology, but also the recent global financial crisis, are driving factors behind the rise of populist parties. For instance, analyzing regional variation in voting patterns suggests that the Brexit vote was primarily driven by economic motives rather than by anti-immigrant sentiments. Ironically, though, most evidence suggests that populist governments have a below-average economic performance once in office, the US and Poland being notable exceptions. A key point of Guriev’s presentation was that populism seems to be a good method to obtain power, but, once in power, populists tend to be less successful in promoting citizen welfare. These findings seem to be of high importance given the increasing public support for populist parties around the world and in parts of Eastern Europe
The conference was very well received and on behalf of SITE, the authors would like to express their appreciation to all speakers and participants for sharing their knowledge and to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for financial support. For those interested to learn more about the papers summarized very briefly above, please visit the conference website and the presenters’ websites as indicated in the text and here below.
Speakers at the Conference
Andreas Stegman, briq – Institute on Behavior and Inequality
Christian Ochsner, CERGE-EI and University of Zurich
Daniel Treisman, University of California, Los Angeles
Galina Zudenkova, TU Dortmund University
Gerhard Toews, New Economic School Moscow
Marvin Suesse, Trinity College
Michal Myck, CenEA
Natalya Naumenko, George Mason University
Ruben Enikolopov, New Economic School Moscow
Scott Gehlbach, University of Chicago
Sergei Guriev, Sciences Po Paris
Tetyana Tyshchuk, Kyiv School of Economics
Timothy Frye, Columbia University
Vasily Korovkin, CERGE-EI