Institutions, Disinformation, and Political Participation in Post-Soviet States

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel explores the relationships between elites and the masses by focusing on three important concepts in the study of the post-Soviet region: Clientelism, disinformation, and electoral participation. What impacts does disinformation have on popular evaluations of political elites? Why is voter turnout higher among regime supporters than opposition supporters in electoral autocracies? Does the introduction of elections in autocracies strengthen the linkage between elites and citizens? Do electoral cycles influence patron-client relationships? By answering these questions with surveys and experiments in Russia, the Baltic states, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, this panel unpacks how the relationship between elites and the masses unfolds in the post-Soviet region.

Chair: Pauline Jones (University of Michigan)
Discussant 1: Bryn Rosenfeld (Cornell University)
Discussant 2: Paul Schuler (University of Arizona)

Masaaki Higashijima (Tohoku University), Gento Kato (Nazarbayev University), and Yuki Shiraito (University of Michigan).

The Introduction of Elections and Public Attitudes in Autocracies: Evidence from Kazakhstan
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.

John Ora Reuter (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee)
The Authoritarian Turnout Gap
In electoral autocracies, regime supporters tend to vote at higher rates than regime opponents. This gives incumbents a built-in electoral advantage. What explains this turnout gap? This paper undertakes the first cross-national examination of this question. Collating data from over 200 surveys in electoral autocracies, the paper demonstrates systematic evidence for this turnout gap. I suggest that the roots of the gap lie in differing orientations toward civic duty. Because autocratic regimes often penetrate and politicize the state, I argue that opposition voters are less likely to revere the state and less likely than regime supporters to believe that voting is a civic duty. The findings suggest that electoral authoritarian regimes stabilize their rule by sowing political apathy among their would-be opponents.

Ryo Nakai (University of Kitakyushu)
A Survey Experiment of Clientelism in Baltic Countries
Despite the passage of thirty years since democratization, the Baltic states continue to experience sporadic allegations of political corruption. Recent advancements in survey-experiment design have revealed an accurate representation of patron-clientelism, which mitigate social desirability bias. Through the implementation of a list experiment survey in Lithuania and a natural experiment design survey in Latvia, no significant instances of electoral clientelism among voters were identified. Instead, elections serve as an opportunity to educate voters and diminish clientelist norms and expectations. This study provides a nuanced understanding of voter-clientelism dynamics in newly consolidated democratic nations.

Scott Radnitz (University of Washington) and Yuan Hsiao (University of Washington)
Disinformation as a Corruption Defense: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Georgia
The spread of disinformation has recently been recognized as a threat by public officials and the media to political participation and democracy itself. Whereas previous scholarship has focused on why people believe false information, we consider an equally insidious problem: that allegations of disinformation can be used by politicians to evade accountability. We run a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample in Georgia, leveraging political polarization to assess how party preferences interact with geopolitical perceptions to shape responses to claims of disinformation. Respondents are shown a vignette in which a presidential candidate from one of the major parties is alleged to have committed corruption. Respondents are randomly assigned one of four denials from the candidate, some involving claims of Russian disinformation. They then state whether they believe the accusation and how likely they are to vote for the candidate. This show how the disinformation discourse, coupled with polarized politics, provides cynical actors with a powerful tool to obfuscate inconvenient facts.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• Elections and Mass Attitudes in Autocracies: Evidence from Kazakhstan - Masaaki Higashijima, University of Tokyo; Gento Kato, Nazarbayev University; Yuki Shiraito, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• A Survey Experiment of Clientelism in Baltic Countries - Ryo Nakai, The University of Tokyo

Chair

• Pauline Jones University of Michigan

Discussants

• Paul J. Schuler University of Arizona

• Bryn Rosenfeld Cornell University