Red-Line Vagueness and Self-censorship under Dictatorships

• In Event: New Methods and Measurement Strategies in the Study of Democracy & Autocracy

Abstract

This paper studies experimentally the relationship between red-line uncertainties and individuals' self-censoring behavior. Fist of all, we provide a formal model showing the non-linearity in their relationship under autocracy. Political leaders, even dictators, must acquire information to govern. Apart from their internal sources, often, they encourage citizens to be their informants. We propose a formal model of information transmission motivated by the attempt of the Chinese government to learn information from the public to combat local corruption and pollution. Analyzing the model allow us to derive several testable predictions.These predictions suggest that a citizen’s decision over self-censorship depends on reward from sharing the information, potential punishment for being censored, the citizens’ information accuracy and their uncertainty about the government’s preference. We investigated our theoretical findings by conducting a lab experiment at NYU Abu Dhabi with 800 subjects. We designed an incentive scheme featuring both positive and negative expectations. This paper aims to improve our understanding about self-censorship in authoritarian regimes. The experiment results could complement current literature that cannot sufficiently investigate the issue due to the unobservable nature of self-censorship.

Authors

• Greg Chih-Hsin Sheen, National Cheng Kung University

• Hans Hanpu Tung, National Taiwan University

• Rebecca B. Morton, New York University

• Wen-Chin Wu, Academia Sinica