Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship

Aldama, Abraham; Vásquez-Cortés, Mateo; Young, Lauren

doi:10.1177/0951629818809425

Cited by 16 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…In a 2009 model, Lupia and Menning (2009) show that modeling fear as temporarily making citizens non-strategic has implications for the type of issues and contexts in which citizens can be manipulated into supporting a regime that they otherwise would oppose. Finally, in related work I explore how the three psychological mechanisms identified in this experiment can be added into a global game (Aldama, Vasquez, and Young 2018). These models begin to bridge the gap between individual-level psychological explanations for citizen behavior in autocracy and equilibrium models where citizen dissent is a strategic complement or substitute.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychology of State Repression: Fear and Dissent Decisions in Zimbabwe

2018

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Many authoritarian regimes use frightening acts of repression to suppress dissent. Theory from psychology suggests that emotions should affect how citizens perceive and process information about repression risk and ultimately whether or not they dissent. I test the effects of emotions on dissent in autocracy by running a lab-in-the-field experiment with 671 opposition supporters in Zimbabwe that randomly assigns some participants to an exercise that induces a mild state of fear, whereas others complete a neutral placebo. The fear treatment significantly reduces hypothetical and behavioral measures of dissent by substantively large amounts. It also increases pessimism about parameters that enter into the dissent decision as well as risk aversion. These results show that emotions interact in important ways with strategic considerations. Fear may be a powerful component of how unpopular autocrats exclude large portions of their populations from mobilizing for regime change.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychology of State Repression: Fear and Dissent Decisions in Zimbabwe

2018

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“…This approach centers on the social-psychology of citizens' decision-making in these authoritarian contexts where the public's subjective perceptions are more predictive of online behavior than expert "objective" assessments (e.g., ratings from international organizations). We build on recent scholarship on the psychology of repression on how fear shapes citizens' perceptions about and engagement in anti-government political participation (Aldama et al, 2019;Young, 2019), and how perceptions about how much freedom citizens enjoy, rather than reality, influence online political behavior in authoritarian contexts (e.g., Behrouzian et al, 2016;Nisbet et al, 2017;Nisbet & Stoycheff, 2013;Stoycheff & Nisbet, 2014).…”

Section: Cost and Risk As Non-equivalent Concepts: The Case Of Networked Authoritarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Share or Not to Share? How Emotional Judgments Drive Online Political Expression in High-Risk Contexts

Dal

Nisbet

2020

Communication Research

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Previous scholarship on networked authoritarianism has examined an array of repressive legal and political strategies employed by regimes to constrain online political expression. How the tension between citizens’ desires to engage in online political expression and the possible dire consequences of doing so is resolved, however, is understudied. We address this lacuna by drawing upon concepts from risk and decision-making research and examining how the emotional and cognitive components of risk and decision-making shape citizens’ online political expression. Employing a three-wave panel survey of Turkish internet users collected over 8 months, our fixed-effects regression analyzes show that anticipatory emotions drive expressive behavior, but that risk assessment does not. Furthermore, the influence of negative emotions on online expression is moderated by individuals’ degree of regime opposition. We discuss the importance of understanding the psychological mechanisms by which networked authoritarian contexts influences citizens’ decisions to engage in contentious online speech.

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“…Each agent’s decision is based on her private belief, formed by noisy public and/or private signals, of a fundamental parameter of interest—regime strength—which determines the threshold for the proportion of agents needed to successfully overthrow the regime. Global games have been applied to a broad array of substantive contexts, ranging from investments (Sakovics and Steiner, 2012) and currency crises (Angeletos et al, 2006) to party leadership (Dewan and Myatt, 2007) and political revolution (Aldama et al, 2019; Boix and Svolik, 2013; Casper and Tyson, 2014; Edmond, 2013; Egorov and Sonin, 2017; Little, 2012; Shadmehr and Bernhardt, 2015; Tyson and Smith, 2018). In our model, the global game characterizes the domestic backdrop against which international diplomacy occurs.…”

Section: The Puzzle Of In-person Diplomacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our study makes two primary contributions, one formal and one substantive. Formally, the model presented here adds to the rich and growing body of global game models, which have been applied broadly to the study of financial investments (Sakovics and Steiner, 2012), currency crises (Angeletos et al, 2006), party leadership (Dewan and Myatt, 2007), and, most commonly in political science, coups and popular revolutions (Aldama et al, 2019; Boix and Svolik, 2013; Casper and Tyson, 2014; Edmond, 2013; Egorov and Sonin, 2017; Little, 2012; Shadmehr and Bernhardt, 2015; Tyson and Smith, 2018). The particular innovation we offer is the introduction of an endogenous information structure resulting from a strategic signal sent by a third party to the conflict, in the form of a foreign power granting diplomatic support to the incumbent regime.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A global game of diplomacy

Malis

Smith

2019

Journal of Theoretical Politics

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Diplomacy always occurs in the shadow of domestic political competition. We develop a model of top-level diplomatic exchange between an incumbent and a foreign leader, embedded within a global game of regime change, and examine four mechanisms that induce a relationship between diplomatic visits and regime survival. First, the foreign leader chooses to visit incumbents who are ex ante more secure in office (a selection effect). Second, because the foreign leader’s decision is based partly on private information, the citizens update on the revelation of that information (a learning effect) and are discouraged from mounting a challenge. Third, the foreign leader can bolster the incumbent’s strength in office with a transfer of material support (a strengthening effect). The latter two effects are then amplified by the complementarities in the citizens’ strategies (a multiplier effect). Contrary to standard global games results, we show that increased precision in the public information transmitted strategically by the foreign power induces a unique equilibrium, as citizens coordinate on the foreign leader’s action. Our findings explain why leaders are so eager to receive state visits from major world powers.

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Fear and citizen coordination against dictatorship

Cited by 16 publications

References 54 publications

The Psychology of State Repression: Fear and Dissent Decisions in Zimbabwe

The Psychology of State Repression: Fear and Dissent Decisions in Zimbabwe

To Share or Not to Share? How Emotional Judgments Drive Online Political Expression in High-Risk Contexts

A global game of diplomacy

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