Political Ties and Participation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in China

• In Event: Media Campaigns and Persuasion

Abstract

Authoritarian rulers often mobilize citizens to engage in government-organized political action. Why do some people living under authoritarian rule choose to participate in government-organized mobilization while others do not? One important explanation points toward fear of negative consequences in case of non-participation. Authoritarian regimes rely more strongly than liberal democracies on coercion in an effort to achieve compliance among subordinates. However, research on political participation in liberal democracies has shown that citizens also respond to mobilization positively when being part of social networks. Compared to liberal democracies, less is known about this relationship in authoritarian contexts.

We argue that social networks also play an important role when people decide to participate in political action that is organized by authoritarian elites. We propose that people who are more strongly tied to political institutions via their social networks are more likely to be mobilized for government-organized participation. Such political ties are defined as personal connections between people working for state institutions and citizens who do not hold such politically-relevant positions.

We study the role of political ties in government-organized mobilization within China as a tightly controlled authoritarian context. We draw on a survey experiment incorporated in a face-to-face nationally representative survey in China. We first demonstrate that those with stronger political ties are more easily mobilized to organize government-organized political action in the context of a local recycling campaign. We assume that the moderator (political ties) is working via mutual obligation as opposed to political fear as mediators.

We designed a survey experiment with experimental treatments varying by source of mobilization being a cadre, neighbour, or media. Respondents were randomly selected into four groups: the control group received a vignette without reference to the source, the three treatment groups with reference to the source. The outcome variable was measured directly after the vignette and measures people’s inclination to take action among a number of possible actions one could take. After the outcome variable, two questions were asked to measure mutual obligation as mediator. The second possible mediator (political fear) was measured towards the end of the survey quite some time after the treatment. The moderator (political ties) was measured towards the end of the survey but before the second mediator (political fear).

To test our hypothesis, we first concentrate on the interaction between treatment groups and respondents’ political ties and show evidence for heterogeneity among the subgroup of people varying in terms of political ties. We then conduct several empirical tests to shed light on causal mechanisms, although the experimental design is limited since mutual obligation was not randomly assigned to respondents.

Finally, we probe external validity of experimental results by examining the relationship between political ties and citizen-initiated forms of political participation. Results show that political ties are more important in government-organized participation compared to citizen-organized participation.

Our findings contribute to research on political ties and participation. Protest and other forms of contentious political action has been extensively studied in authoritarian regimes, but less is known about government-organized participation. Increased interest in electoral authoritarianism has led to improved understandings of voting and participatory institutions in unstable democracies or dominant party regimes. Only recently has scholarship turned to studying pro-government protests. Building on this discussion, we advance prior knowledge by engaging with actions that part of campaigning to achieve support for the policies and goals of political elites. These themes are related to this year’s APSA theme as this paper shed slight on retrenchment by authoritarian elites.

Author

• Daniela Stockmann, Hertie School