The Internet and Electoral Participation in China’s Rural Villages

• In Event: New Insights on the Internet and Authoritarian Rule in China

Abstract

Existing research has recognized the effect of the Internet on democracy. The Internet is often regarded as contributing to the democratic process by giving citizens the opportunity to engage in political talk and assess conflicting ideas, by providing citizens easy access to information, thus mobilizing citizens to participate in democratic process. However, the burgeoning comparative literature on the Internet and democracy has focused on liberal democracies. Less is known about how the advent of the Internet has transformed authoritarian elections in terms of changing the perception and behaviors of voters and shaping the balance of power between authoritarian rulers and challengers under the context of authoritarian regimes. This paper will explore whether Internet use mobilizes or impede participation in grassroots elections in China’s rural villages.

Existing studies on authoritarian subnational elections have demonstrated that local elections without partisan competition in single-party authoritarian regimes provide considerable advantages to regime-supported candidates and can produce electoral outcomes in favor of authoritarian rulers. China’s village elections are such a type of subnational elections where opposition is not allowed to organize into parties and incumbents tend to dominate these elections. With the advent of the Internet, a new source of information and a new tool for mobilization, will authoritarian rulers be able to continue their dominance in such elections? Does the Internet empower citizens to discuss about elections or even mobilize them to participate in elections?

Based on data from the China Internet Survey, a representative sample of the Chinese population (n = 3,144), this paper analyzes the effect of Internet use on villagers’ participation in rural elections. Regression analyses show that Internet users are more likely to vote and also participate in campaign and mobilization activities in elections. When introducing the interaction effect of Internet use with perceived knowledge of electoral procedures and information, the significant effect of Internet use on electoral participation is picked up mainly by the interaction term, demonstrating that the mechanism behind the mobilizing effect of Internet use is information access. In other words, Internet use provides easy access to information about village elections, thus empowering villagers to participate in electoral activities. The results are also tested and validated by looking into rural respondents’ Internet activities.

The findings suggest that the Internet has the potential to change the balance of power between authoritarian rulers and challengers under the context of authoritarian regimes by breaking the monopoly of information previously possessed by the authoritarian rulers. Citizens have access to conflicted information and have more space to express their views and mobilize collective actions in the digital age. Yet, there is also a caveat in examining the findings – inequality of access to the Internet. The findings also suggest that in rural elections, villagers have unequal access to the Internet and have different levels of ability to acquire and understand information from online sources, creating a digital divide between the digital powerful group and the disadvantaged group. This digital divide also shapes the balance of power in grassroots elections.

Author

• Ting Luo, Hertie School of Governance