How To Keep Citizens Disengaged: Propaganda and Causal Misperceptions (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Emotions, Beliefs, and Political Behavior in Pluralistic Societies

Abstract

Why are some countries more prone to frequent anti-government protests than others under similar conditions? Using Bayesian networks to explore causal misconceptions, we propose a model of subjective belief formation that gives a prominent role to history in explaining how protest cultures are formed and persist. We propose that past anti-regime actions may influence the inferences citizens make regarding the effect of protests on economic performance, even in the absence of a direct causal relationship. When regime strength is related to both economic performance and protests, it induces a correlation between the two. The regime can leverage this spurious relationship to sustain subjective beliefs that postulate a negative effect of protesting on economic performance. The strength of the correlation is driven by the empirical frequency of protesting in the data, with fewer instances of past protests leading to a stronger inferred correlation, thus making protests less likely in the current period. Our analysis has important implications regarding the plausibility of propaganda claims uttered by authoritarian rulers around the world.

Authors

• Korhan Kocak, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Carlo Matthias Horz, Texas A&M University