Transparency for Authoritarian Stability: Open Government Information and Contention with Institutions in China

34 Pages Posted: 1 Apr 2022 Last revised: 23 Feb 2023

See all articles by Handi Li

Handi Li

Peking University - School of Government; Emory University - Department of Political Science; Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies

Date Written: June 20, 2022

Abstract

It is widely agreed that authoritarian governments conceal or censor information in order to maintain social stability. However, does transparency necessarily increase mass threats? Many non-democracies have recently adopted open government information (OGI)—a policy transparency measure allowing citizens to identify illegal government behaviors that affect them. Based on the Chinese case, I theorize that policy transparency can redirect popular discontent from the streets to institutional dispute resolution venues such as the courts. Using online and in-the-field survey experiments about OGI on land-taking compensation, I show that OGI improves citizens’ preference for legal and political institutions and causes them to prioritize institutions over protest when they have grievances against government. Multiple findings suggest that this is because the evidence of local misbehavior increases their perceived fairness of institutions for dispute resolution. This study shows that, unlike macro-level information transparency, policy transparency mitigates the risk of protest in an autocracy.

Suggested Citation

Li, Handi, Transparency for Authoritarian Stability: Open Government Information and Contention with Institutions in China (June 20, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4069885 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4069885

Handi Li (Contact Author)

Peking University - School of Government

No. 38 Xueyuan Road
Haidian District
Beijing, Beijing 100871
China

Emory University - Department of Political Science ( email )

Atlanta, GA
United States

HOME PAGE: http://handi-li.net/

Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies

326 Aaron Burr Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
166
Abstract Views
548
Rank
295,867
PlumX Metrics