by: Myunghee Lee and Dongjin Kwak
| What do autocrats do when they observe other countries’ protests? Are they only concerned about the diffusion of protests? We argue that dictators pay attention to other countries’ regime contention without the possibility of a diffusion. Autocrats use those protests to evaluate their regime’s popular uprising possibilities. Dictators suffer from an information problem regarding their population control. In facing such a problem, autocrats rely on information shortcuts. Other countries’ popular mobilization can be a useful information source for dictators. Nevertheless, we argue that autocrats do not treat all the other countries’ protests equally. We claim that autocrats are more likely to reference political protests in similar regimes. Similar regimes use similar policies and internal security systems to control populations. If they experience a popular mobilization, that indicates that those systems do not function well. We also claim that autocrats in the same dependence network are more likely to reference political protests within the network. Through the communication lines developed within the network, information is readily available. When autocrats evaluate that their regime stability is under the threat of popular mobilization signaled by other countries’ protests, they will repress their population. With spatial modeling, we find evidence that supports our hypotheses. We also provide qualitative evidence of China under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, showing how information problems led dictators to monitor other countries’ moments of instability. |
Authoritarian Political Systems Group 