11:00 - 13:15
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Felix Wiebrecht
Discussant/s:
Sergi Martinez
Meeting Room E

Anja Neundorf, Ksenia Northmore-Ball, Johannes Gerschewski, Aykut Ozturk, Katerina Tertytchnaya
A loyal base? Support for authoritarian regimes in times of crisis – The case of Turkey

Haoyu Zhai
Agents of State Control? Neighbourhood Organisations and Authoritarian Rule

Edward Goldring, Peter Ward
Keeping Up With the Kims: A Social Network Analysis of the Effects of Purges in North Korea

Felix Wiebrecht
Loyalty or Expertise - What Does an Authoritarian Regime Value in Consultations?
Loyalty or Expertise - What Does an Authoritarian Regime Value in Consultations?
Felix Wiebrecht
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Authoritarian regimes suffer from inherent information asymmetry problems. Prior research has shown how dictators have created different channels including formal institutions that mitigate the problem of information collection. However, less attention has been paid to what kind of information authoritarian regimes value and act upon. In particular, it remains unexplored whether regimes value good information or demonstrations of loyalty. Anecdotal evidence, for instance, from the famine in China between 1958 and 1961 suggests that authoritarian regimes are unable to process information accurately. On the other hand, authoritarian regimes often justify the creation of consultative mechanisms as efforts to rationalize policymaking. Drawing on an original dataset of proposals and government responses to a Provincial People’s Political Consultative Conference (PPCC) in China, this paper analyzes precisely how the authoritarian government reacts to different kinds of information that it receives. In particular, it is assessing whether high-quality information will be appreciated more by government agencies or whether the identity of the proposer is more decisive in determining the governments’ responses.