Authoritarian Governance with Public Communication ∗

Why would an authoritarian regime allow citizens to complain publicly if, as is often presumed, exchange of information among citizens invites social instability? This paper studies how an authoritarian regime allows citizens to publicly express preferences to strengthen its rule. We argue that public communication has two functions. First, it disorganizes the citizens or strengthens their disagreement if, through communication, they find themselves split over government policies. Second, if communication reveals that citizens share a high level of dissatisfaction, the government identifies the danger and improves the policies accordingly. We show that the government allows public communication if and only if it perceives sufficient heterogeneity among citizens. The model also illustrates that public communication could serve as a commitment device that ensures government responsiveness when it faces high dissatisfaction, which in turn makes the government better off than with private polling. ∗This version: August 28, 2014. We are indebted to Carles Boix, Scott Gehlbach, Bob Gibbons, Jens Hainmueller, Haifeng Huang, Matias Iaryczower, John Londregan, Peter Lorentzen, Nolan McCarty, Adam Meirowitz, Kris Ramsay, Tom Romer, Jim Sndyer, Lily Tsai, Leonard Wantchekon, as well as seminar participants at Florida State University, LSE, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Tsinghua SEM, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Harvard-MIT-BU China Workshop, New Faces in China Studies at Duke, Political Economy Graduate Conference at NYU, Biennial Conference of China Development Studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Conference in Political Economy at Renmin University, 2014 Conference of Theoretical Research in Development Economics at Barcelona GSE, 2014 SPSA and MPSA Conferences for helpful comments. We are also grateful for the Q-APS program for generous support. †Wallis Institute of Political Economy, University of Rochester; Department of Politics and Program in Political Economy, Princeton University. Email: [email protected]. ‡Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Email: [email protected].