Transparency and Authoritarian Stability: Open Government Information in China Open Access

Abstract

This three-essay dissertation investigates how transparency influences social contention and legal resistance in autocracies. Focusing on Open Government Information, a popular transparency initiative in the developing world, this dissertation proposes a theory of dual effects of authoritarian transparency. Conventional wisdom holds that transparency in autocracies allows citizens to pull fire alarms when regime agents misbehave, thereby monitoring agents but risking more social contention. The first two papers show that transparency redirects grievances and instead reduces protests. In Essay One, I present two new datasets on the transparency of Chinese local governments measured by a comprehensive index and single-issue information availability, respectively. I find that the number of protests declines with greater transparency in both measurements. Integrating evidence from online and in-the-field survey experiments as well as interviews in China, Essay Two shows that transparency increases citizens' perceived fairness of legal and political institutions and causes them to prioritize institutions over protest when they have grievances against the governments. Essay Three questions the effectiveness of transparency for challenging agents. Because agents can manipulate institutions such as the courts, transparency causes an agent backlash effect that blocks citizens' challenges. Using an original dataset of court judgments and a difference-in-differences design based on a grassroots transparency experiment in China, I find that transparency encourages legal resistance against local governments but makes citizens less likely to win. This perverse effect is driven by local judicial dependence. In sum, this dissertation suggests that while authoritarian transparency improves citizens' confidence in institutions and leads citizens to challenge local agents through institutions, it does not generate accountability in the absence of institutional independence. 

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Essay 1: Does Open Government Information Increase Protest?: Evidence from New

Datasets in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.2 Does Open Government Information Increase or Decrease Mass Threats? . . . . . 9

1.3 Data and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.3.1 A Comprehensive Transparency Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.3.2 Measuring Local Transparency of A Single Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.3.3 Dependent Variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1.5 Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

1.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Essay 2: Transparency for Stability: Open Government Information and Contention

with Institutions in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.2 A Theory of Grievance Redirection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

2.2.1 Approaches to Dispute Resolution and Authoritarian Stability . . . . . . . 39

2.2.2 Transparency and Citizens’ Preference for Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . 40

2.3 Open Government Information and Land Disputes in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

2.4 Experiments of OGI Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

2.4.1 Experiment Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

2.4.2 Main Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

2.4.3 Alternative Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

2.5 An Experiment in the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

2.5.1 Survey Distribution and Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

2.5.2 Result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

2.6 What People Say about Transparency and Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

2.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Essay 3: Monitoring and Manipulation: Authoritarian Transparency and Legal Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

3.2 Monitoring Agents with Transparency in Authoritarian Regimes . . . . . . . . . . 89

3.3 Institution Dependence and the Limitation of Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

3.4 Local Transparency Experiment and Legal Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

3.4.1 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

3.4.2 Difference-in-Differences Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

3.4.3 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

3.4.4 Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

3.5 Information, Institution Manipulation, and the Perverse Effect of Transparency . . 100

3.5.1 Local Information Disclosure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

3.5.2 Judicial Dependence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

3.6 Alternative Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

3.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Political Science
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, General
Keyword	China authoritarian politics open government information contentious politics transparency
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jennifer Gandhi, Yale University
Committee Members	Adam Glynn, Emory University John Patty, Emory University Yuhua Wang, Harvard University Renard Sexton, Emory University

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