Digital Authoritarianism in China: Regional Disparities in Policing Apps

• In Event: Digital Authoritarianism, Regime Survival, and Authoritarian Diffusion

Abstract

Utilizing an original dataset from over 300 Chinese prefectural cities and incorporating over 30 explanatory variables—including GDP per capita, local government size, crime rates, and local technological development—we employ a hybrid approach that merges machine learning algorithms with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Our initial findings highlight several key predictors of digitalized policing outcomes, spanning economic, political, and societal variables. QCA sufficiency tests yield solutions of high consistency and coverage, indicating that economic factors alone do not account for local government pursuits in digital policing. Instead, it is a combination of local government leadership agency, societal scrutiny following mass incidents, and fiscal institutional constraints that jointly shape these endeavors. This nuanced understanding challenges the conventional view of China’s coercive power, suggesting that the conversion of economic into coercive power must be contextualized within local political institutional constraints. This paper enriches our comprehension of state capacity, coercion, and digital governance.

Author

• Yuchen Liu, Peking University