Information Manipulation and Repression: A Theory and Evidence from the COVID Response in Russia
中文摘要
威权政府是否利用新冠疫情及相关限制措施加强了对权力的控制？基于俄罗斯83个地区的数据，我们表明确实如此——疫情期间，正是制度质量和公民社会的力量限制了政府的信息操纵与镇压，而这两者是威权政权的两大主要工具。反对派领导人阿列克谢·纳瓦利内于2020年8月遭投毒、并于2021年1月被监禁后出现的逮捕浪潮，在新冠疫情统计数据操纵程度更高的地区更为显著。威权工具使用的增加也付出了代价：错误信息降低了民众对疫情限制措施的遵从度。除双向固定效应外，我们还采用敏感性分析来处理可能存在的遗漏变量。我们的研究发现与宣传和镇压在理论上的互补性一致。在控制疫情强度和制度特征后，政治镇压程度更高的地区也表现出更严重的信息操纵。
Abstract
Were COVID-19 and the associated restrictions used by authoritarian governments to tighten their grip on power? Using data from 83 Russian regions, we show that yes, they were – during the pandemic, it was the quality of institutions and the strength of civil society that limited the government’s information manipulation and repression, two main tools of authoritarian regimes. Arrest waves that followed the poisoning of Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader, in August 2020 and his jailing in January 2021 were more pronounced in those regions that manipulated the COVID-19 statistics more. The increase in the usage of authoritarian tools came at a price: misinformation reduced compliance with pandemic restrictions. In addition to two-way fixed effects, we use sensitivity analysis to account for possible omitted variables. Our findings are consistent with the theoretical complementarity between propaganda and repression. Regions that had more political repression also exhibited greater information manipulation, conditional on pandemic intensity and institutional characteristics.