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Preventive repression and public opinion in authoritarian regimes:
To manage opposition to their rule, contemporary autocracies use strategies of repression that do not involve the use of violence. This paper studies how strategies of nonviolent repression used in anticipation of dissent, such as protest permit denials, shape how the public evaluates targeted groups. The paper tests arguments with evidence from contemporary Russia. Drawing on evidence from unusually detailed data on protests that succeeded and failed to secure the authorities’ approval, and surveys of public opinion, the paper shows that preventive repression compromises protesters’ ability to generate mass support. The findings also suggest that the effects of preventive repression are contingent on people’s views about the law.
Author: Katerina Tertytchnaya
A loyal base: support for authoritarian regimes in times of crisis
To generate mass support, autocracies provide citizens with material goods. Autocrats also use ideological narratives, media propaganda, and indoctrination in schools to create loyal citizens. This paper studies whether mass support for the norms and values of nondemocratic governments, such as patriotism and support for strongman leadership, helps stabilize authoritarian regimes. To test arguments, the paper relies on online experiments conducted in Turkey. The findings suggest that support for the norms and principles of the regime helps dampen the electoral consequences of poor performance. Autocrats’ ‘core’, or ‘loyal’ supporters help stabilize authoritarian rule. This group of citizens continues to support the authorities, even when their performance falters.
Team: Anja Neundorf, Aykut Ozturk and Johannes Gerschewski
Endogenous popularity: How perceptions of support affect the popularity of authoritarian regimes:
Being popular makes it easier for dictators to govern. This paper asks whether the perception of popularity itself affects incumbent approval in autocracies. Using experimental methods, this paper finds that manipulating information—and thereby perceptions—about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity shapes respondents’ support for him. These findings imply that shaping perceptions—through propaganda, indoctrination, schools, and the media—is an important element of authoritarian popularity and thus stability.
Team: Noah Buckley, Kyle L Marquardt, Ora John Reuter and Katerina Tertytchnaya.
Respect the Process: The Public Cost of Unilateral Action in Comparative Perspective. 2025. Journal of Politics. (With Jonathan Chu).
Executives often bypass legislatures to make policy by decree. How does public opinion react to this unilateral decision-making? Building from research on executive orders in the United States and comparative theories of legislatures, we argue that executives in both democratic and authoritarian political systems will incur a public approval cost for making policy decisions unilaterally. Through survey experiments implemented in the United States and Egypt, we show that executives consistently receive lower approval for unilateral action, even among co-partisans. We find evidence that this effect is driven by the belief that excluding the legislature violates appropriate democratic procedure, but also that the effect weakens when unilateral action is used to advance policies known to have majority support. Observational survey data from dozens of countries reinforce the experimental results. The paper contributes to understanding of the contexts in which popular support for democracy may constrain unilateral decision-making.
Author: Scott Williamson (with Jonathan Chu).
People Consistently View Elections and Civil Liberties as Key Components of Democracy. 2024. Science. (With Jonathan Chu and Eddy S.F. Yeung).
How do people around the world define democracy? Answering this question is critical as countries face democratic backsliding and authoritarian governments promote alternative notions of democracy. Indeed, some scholars argue that people from different backgrounds understand democracy differently. By contrast, we discovered very consistent views about what constitutes a “democratic” country from conjoint survey experiments conducted in Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Thailand, and the United States. Across countries (N = 6150) and diverse subgroups within countries, people similarly emphasized free and fair elections and civil liberties as being the key determinants of democracy. Countries that produce desirable social and economic outcomes are also considered more democratic, but these and other factors exert a smaller and less consistent effect than elections and civil liberties.
Author: Scott Williamson (with Jonathan Chu and Eddy S.F. Yeung).
Did Egypt’s Post-Uprising Crime Wave Increase Support for Authoritarian Rule? 2022. Journal of Peace Research. (With Lisa Blaydes, Alexandra Blackman, Caroline Abadeer).
Countries transitioning from autocracy to democracy often struggle to maintain law and order. Yet relatively little is known about how changes in levels of crime impact public support for authoritarian rule. We find an empirical relationship between increasing crime and support for authoritarian leadership in Egypt following the 2011 Uprisings. Analysis of original crime data from Egypt suggests that electoral districts exposed to larger year-on-year changes in localized patterns of crime were more likely to vote for the “strongman” candidate in Egypt’s first, and only, free and fair presidential election in 2012. We validate these findings with survey evidence which shows that Egyptians who were highly concerned about crime were more likely to express support for a strong leader over democracy as well as for military rule, even after controlling for a broad set of covariates. This research illustrates how founding elections that occur during a period of rising personal insecurity risk becoming referenda on order and stability, with negative implications for the consolidation of democratic institutions.
Author: Scott Williamson (With Lisa Blaydes, Alexandra Blackman, Caroline Abadeer)