Elections and Mass Attitudes in Autocracies: Evidence from Kazakhstan

• In Event: Institutions, Disinformation, and Political Participation in Post-Soviet States

Abstract

Existing studies on autocratic elections characterize authoritarian elections as the dictators' signaling of their strength, information gathering of local-level grievances, and agency control within the ruling elites. Yet, how authoritarian elections alter the public's views on the regime and its ruling elites, which is the micro-foundation of these mechanisms, is underexplored. We conduct a survey in Kazakhstan to examine the impact of local elections on citizens' political efficacy and the evaluation of local elites. We exploit the staggered introduction of local elections due to past turnovers of appointed local officials to compare those who experienced elections and those who did not, and utilize the item count technique, conjoint analysis, and anchoring vignettes to measure public political attitudes.

Authors

• Masaaki Higashijima, University of Tokyo

• Gento Kato, Nazarbayev University

• Yuki Shiraito, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor