Who Is to Blame? Political Centralization and Electoral Punishment under Authoritarianism

Beazer, Quintin H.; Reuter, Ora John

doi:10.1086/701834

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…It appears that the centralization of power, efforts to project an image of an all-powerful leader, and weak institutions likely reduce incumbent's capacity to credibly deflect blame. Thus, the institutional structure of electoral authoritarianism might actually "clarify responsibility" for policy outcomes to voters to a degree that is potentially detrimental for the incumbent (Beazer and Reuter 2019;Rosenfeld 2018). We can expect democratic institutional structures that concentrate power in the executive to similarly limit opportunities for incumbents to shift blame.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…How effective are these strategies in swaying the views of citizens in electoral autocracies, the focus of our study? While one may expect the propaganda advantage to provide a significant leeway to electoral autocrats in shaping public opinion, the centralization of power in these regimes might render it hard for the rulers to credibly deflect blame for unfavorable outcomes (Beazer and Reuter 2019). Moreover, as the incumbent tries to move the political agenda away from the economy, voters' daily experience might keep them occupied with economic concerns.…”

Section: Coping With Economic Downturnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effectiveness of Incumbent’s Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey

Aytaç

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

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To minimize damage to their popularity during economic downturns, rulers in electoral autocracies can draw on their propaganda advantage to keep the economy off the political agenda or shift the blame to other actors. How successful are these strategies in swaying citizens’ views? While electoral autocrats frequently resort to these strategies, there is surprisingly little evidence about their effectiveness. To address this gap, I took advantage of the recent economic crisis in Turkey and deployed a population-based survey experiment that mimicked incumbent’s use of these strategies. I find that incumbent’s efforts of shifting the blame fail to elicit intended effects among large parts of the electorate. In contrast, changing the political agenda away from the economy to an issue area that is more favorable for the incumbent is more effective for shoring up popular support. These findings contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that help sustain electoral authoritarianism.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Coping With Economic Downturnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of Incumbent’s Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey

Aytaç

2021

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Does vote mobilization help protect mayors from arrest? Russian subnational officials are often enlisted to help the regime mobilize votes (Beazer and Reuter 2019;Reuter and Robertson 2012).…”

Section: Empirical Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Staying Out of Trouble: Criminal Cases Against Russian Mayors

Buckley

Reuter

Rochlitz

et al. 2022

Comparative Political Studies

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Although repression against elites is a common occurrence in authoritarian regimes, we know little about which elites are targeted. This paper uses an original dataset on the prosecution of mayors in large Russian cities to examine the factors that make elites more likely to be arrested. We argue that in electoral authoritarian regimes like Russia, regime leaders are reluctant to arrest popular officials. Such officials command political capital that is useful to the regime, and arrests of prominent officials can produce popular backlash. We examine this argument using an original dataset on all arrests of municipal leaders in Russia’s 221 largest cities between 2002 and 2018. We find that mayors who won their elections by large margins are less likely to be arrested. In addition, we document several other substantively important patterns: (1) a mayor’s professional background is not related to the likelihood of arrest, (2) opposition mayors are four times more likely to be arrested, and (3) mobilization of votes for the regime is not protective against arrest. JEL Classifications P16, P30, R59

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“…The novelty of our paper consists in testing for the politicization of a relatively low-level bureaucracy that is nominally depoliticized, and not visibly involved in voter mobilization during elections. 2 To limit the likelihood that the behavior of bureaucrats in our experiment is nevertheless motivated by the 2 While some regional bureaucracies in Russia, such as the office of the regional governor (Reuter and Robertson 2012;Reuter 2013;Rochlitz 2016) or mayors (Reuter et al 2016;Beazer and Reuter 2019) are often directly involved in running regional political machines, this is not the case for investment promotion agencies. When building our dataset we took care to check for any signs of political affiliation for the agencies included in our sample, but did not find any instance where this was the case.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bureaucratic discrimination in electoral authoritarian regimes: Experimental evidence from Russia

Rochlitz

Mitrokhina

Nizovkina

2021

European Journal of Political Economy

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Are investors in electoral authoritarian regimes discriminated against for political activism? In this paper, we implement a simple experiment to test whether affiliation with the ruling party or the political opposition affects the probability that investors receive advice from investment promotion agencies in Russian regions. Between December 2016 and June 2017, we sent 1504 emails with a short question and a number of randomized treatments to 188 investment promotion agencies in 70 Russian regions. Although investment promotion agencies are nominally depoliticized in Russia, we find that switching the political affiliation of a potential investor from the opposition party "Yabloko" to the government party "United Russia" on average increases the chances to receive a reply by 30%. The effect strongly depends on regional levels of political competition, with higher levels of discrimination in regions that are less politically competitive.

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Who Is to Blame? Political Centralization and Electoral Punishment under Authoritarianism

Cited by 14 publications

References 30 publications

Effectiveness of Incumbent’s Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey

Effectiveness of Incumbent’s Strategic Communication during Economic Crisis under Electoral Authoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey

Staying Out of Trouble: Criminal Cases Against Russian Mayors

Bureaucratic discrimination in electoral authoritarian regimes: Experimental evidence from Russia

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