Detailing the Regime
Who Reads Criticism Matters: How Selective Exposure Affects Public Backlash to Foreign Shaming
Jamie Gruffydd-Jones
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent experimental studies have found that foreign shaming can be counterproductive, engendering more positive public opinion toward a target government. This paper shows that whether foreign shaming in fact leads to this kind of backlash is dependent on citizens' exposure to the shaming. A modified participant preference trial finds that less nationalist Chinese citizens are significantly more likely to choose to read about American criticism of COVID-19 policies in China. While the criticism has no impact on those respondents who choose to read it, it significantly increases support for the Chinese government among those who choose not to. These findings demonstrate the importance of understanding which members of the public are exposed to international actions, and how campaigns to highlight these actions may make a backlash more likely.
Discovering Controversies through Reversions: A Text-based Analysis of China's Two-phase Bill Changes
Jiying Jiang
China Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study uncovers hidden disputes in China's law-making process by systematically tracking bill changes across executive and legislative phases. Utilizing an original dataset of 45 executive-initiated bills (2008-2023), it identifies a consistent pattern of reversions -- instances where executive-approved changes to draft bills were overridden in the legislature -- revealing the National People's Congress to be a key policy battleground. Reversions are concentrated in bills concerning health, safety and environment, often involving scope, regulatory frameworks and legal liability. Combined with qualitative case studies, these findings demonstrate the legislature's crucial role in facilitating monitoring and negotiation in the policy process, offering new insights into executive-legislative dynamics in China's single-party regime.
Constitutional Monarchy and Long-Run Economic Growth: Friends or Foes?
Nuno Garoupa & Rok Spruk
European Journal of Law and Economics, April 2026, Pages 113-150
Abstract:
This article examines the long-run relationship between constitutional monarchy and economic growth using a panel of 37 countries from 1870 to 2018. Exploiting the staggered timing of regime transitions as a source of quasi-experimental variation, we reassess whether monarchies promote prosperity or merely survive because of it. The results suggest that pre-existing economic development, rather than monarchical institutions themselves, explains the persistence of constitutional monarchy. The apparent growth advantage of monarchies is concentrated among wealthier pre-war states, where fiscal capacity and institutional maturity sustained stability. In poorer settings, constitutional monarchies failed to generate lasting growth and were eventually replaced by republican regimes, which subsequently outperformed them. These findings imply that prosperity sustains monarchy, not the reverse, and that contemporary constitutional monarchies represent the historical survivors of economic success rather than its institutional cause.
Standard Language, Propaganda, and Government Satisfaction under Authoritarianism
Jieun Kim
British Journal of Political Science, April 2026
Abstract:
Beyond its role in nation and state building, I argue that standard language promotion enables autocrats to increase citizens' satisfaction with the government by expanding the reach of propaganda. Drawing on large-scale surveys supplemented by original interviews, I test this argument in China, which has successfully promoted a common language, putonghua, in recent decades. By leveraging cross-cohort, cross-locality variations in exposure to putonghua at school following a major language reform in 2001, I find that greater exposure to putonghua increases government satisfaction. Individual-level evidence highlights a potential mechanism: increased consumption of television political news, a key channel for state propaganda delivered exclusively in putonghua. This study has implications for state-society communications and authoritarian control.
Globalization and Political Protests: The Role of Imported Movies
Lu Sun & Quan Li
International Studies Quarterly, June 2026
Abstract:
We study how political protest movies produced by and imported from democratic countries influence anti-government demonstrations in autocratic countries. We argue that public consumption of imported protest movies increases anti-government demonstrations by inducing imitation or copycat behaviors, facilitating coordination and social networking, and imparting democratic values. To test our argument, we compile and analyze a novel dataset on political protest movies from 2000 to 2018. We find that widely watched protest movies have a significant positive impact on anti-government demonstrations. Our instrumental variable estimation, along with a battery of placebo tests, provides further empirical support. Neither little-watched protest movies nor widely watched family romance movies affect protests, and widely watched imported protest movies do not impact prior political protests in autocracies or subsequent political protests in democracies. Our research contributes to the scholarship on the effects of globalization, foreign media, and international service trade, highlighting the role of foreign culture in shaping political outcomes.
Education, Indoctrination, and Mass Mobilization in Autocracies
Prince Selorm Tetteh & Amanda Edgell
Political Research Quarterly, June 2026, Pages 509-527
Abstract:
This article examines how regime efforts at educational indoctrination affect mass mobilization in autocracies. The literature tends to emphasize education's democratizing potential. However, mass schooling in autocracies also facilitates pro-government propaganda, which may undermine the democratic character of mass mobilization in contexts where the regime uses education for indoctrination. This article builds on previous experimental findings to evaluate the correlation between regime indoctrination efforts through schooling and mass mobilization using expert assessments and observational data. Analyzing autocratic spells from 1950 to 2019, we find that educational indoctrination correlates with reduced mass mobilization. Specifically, autocracies investing in indoctrination show weaker pro-democracy movements and are less likely to experience anti-system uprisings. Conversely, educational indoctrination correlates with mobilization for autocracy, indicating it helps solidify authoritarian regimes against democratic pressures and promotes regime-compatible demonstrations.
Revealed and Concealed Repression: Theory and Measurement
Maria Titova et al.
Vanderbilt University Working Paper, April 2026
Abstract:
Regimes routinely conceal acts of repression. We show that observed repression may be negatively correlated with total repression, consisting of both revealed and concealed acts. This distortion can generate perverse effects for policy interventions designed to reduce repression and complicates inference about the causes and consequences of repression. We develop a model in which regimes choose whether to conceal repression and activists decide whether to challenge the regime. We identify two measurement problems -- one due to concealment and one to deterrence. We construct indices of repression that account for these problems and show how these indices can be expressed in terms of observable variables by leveraging equilibrium relationships. We then propose an empirical strategy to estimate these indices. As a proof of concept, we apply this approach to Russia, estimating repression indices at a monthly frequency for 2020-2025.
Ideology Without Unity: The Rhizomatic Logic of Xi Jinping Thought
Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt
China Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article reconceptualizes Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (Xi Thought hereafter) not as a coherent doctrine but as a rhizomatic ideological formation. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, it treats Xi Thought as a configuration in which coherence is not presupposed but produced through the continual recombining of fragments across institutional sites. Based on an analysis of official publications, including collected works, excerpt volumes and study readers, the article shows how Xi's speeches are disassembled and reassembled across domains such as law, economy, diplomacy and culture. These recompositions render ideology modular and resilient, allowing elements to be activated, re-weighted or sidelined without destabilizing the system as a whole. The article further argues that ideological coherence is generated through distributed and compulsory participation by Party and state actors, who are required to embed fragments of Xi Thought into institutional practice. Conceptualizing Xi Thought as a rhizome shifts analysis from doctrinal meaning to the operational logic through which ideology acquires administrative force within the Chinese party-state.