Manipulated Date and Motivated Vote under Autocracy: An Experiment in Hong Kong

• In Event: Poster Session: Democracy & Autocracy

Abstract

Dictators exploit elections as a tool of authoritarian control, but few have studied their manipulation of election schedules; nor do we understand how manipulated schedules influences citizens' political participation. This paper argues that manipulated election schedules send a public signal of regime weakness. Citizens anticipate the next electoral contest to be a tight race and the regime to lack the resources to punish protesters, therefore becoming more likely to vote and join protests. I draw evidence from an online survey experiment in Hong Kong where the 2020 legislative election was postponed. The experiment demonstrates that the message of election delay is informative to subjects in that when they are primed with the message, they become more likely to make a decision whether to vote and whether to join protests. A straightforward message that describes the postponement most effectively encourages voter turnout, especially for opposition supporters. However, it only mitigates the message's influence on political participation if the postponement is framed in the context of either the threat of COVID-19, pro-government parties' previous electoral setback, or a sweeping overhaul of the city's political system. Findings suggest that, in opaque autocracies, ordinary citizens learn about regime popularity from the rare information revealed by manipulated election schedules. When dictators meddle with the election date to sustain their power, it can backfire by mobilizing opposition votes.

Author

• Jia Li, Utah State University