APOSS 96 - Tongtong Zhang
Affiliation
Peking University and Princeton University
Date
March 1, 2023
9-10:00AM JST
Discussants
Yue Hou (Penn) and Hanzhang Liu (Pitzer)
Screenshot
Coauthors and affiliations
Keywords
transparency, legal resistance, China
Abstract
Existing studies suggest that transparency in authoritarian regimes serves to monitor their agents through the citizens' challenges. However, whether citizens can successfully challenge the agents is questionable, because the latter may block the resistance when they can influence the channels of resistance. We analyze original datasets of legal resistance and local transparency regarding land exploitation in China, using a difference-in-differences design based on a transparency experiment. We find that while transparency encourages citizens to file lawsuits against local governments, it makes citizens less likely to win. We further show that the perverse effect is driven by local judicial dependence. This study implies mixed effects of transparency on agent monitoring and legal resistance in autocracies. Although transparency provides citizens with information to challenge local governments, it also signals the regime's monitoring, which incentivizes local governments to block the challenges through institution manipulation.
Status
Title
Gender and Political Compliance under Authoritarian Rule