NOT JUST SINGLE PROPAGANDA: HOW THE MEDIA HELP AUTOCRATS TO SURVIVE
Keywords:
authoritarianism, hybrid regimes, media, censor's dilemma, competitive authori-tarianism, authoritarian consolidation, political agendaAbstract
The paper is focused on describing and systematizing the approaches in Russian and foreign academic literature to assessing the role of the media in supporting authoritarian regimes. There is a widespread opinion that independent media play the role of ‘shop windows’, which are demonstrated as evidence of press freedom in the country, and, correspondingly, fulfillment of one of the formal conditions for the existence of democracy according to Robert Dahl. In addition to that, authoritarian leaders often invent some other ways to use the media, including gathering information about the real situation in regions, getting feedback on implementation of policies, strengthening bureaucratic control over local officials, assessing the quality of formal institutions at the regional level, and maintaining intra-elite struggle, which ultimately helps to demonstrate the dominance of the ‘winning coalition’ and, as a result, increases the power of incumbents. However, this tactic also carries some threats, defined as the ‘censor's dilemma’. The censors should determine a sufficient level of pressure on the media, which, on the one hand, would assist in fulfilling these tasks and, on the other hand, would not lead to an increase in opposition sentiments. The article aims to provide a further set of arguments to prove that the media in authoritarian regimes are not always ‘spoiled institutions’ as they used to be perceived, but they function as a full-fledged tool for the survival of undemocratic leaders. DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2019-1-83-89References
Балаян, А.А., Вишневский, Б.Л. (2017) ‘Контроль государства за СМИ в современной России: причины, механизм и послед-ствия распространения «пост-правды»’, Политическая экс-пертиза: Политэкс, 13, сс. 100‒109. [Balayan, A.A., Vish-nevskii, B.L. (2017) ‘Control of the state on the media in modern Russia: causes, mechanism and consequences of the distribution of «post-truth»’ [Kontrol' gosu-darstva za SMI v sovremennoi Rossii: prichiny, mekhanizm i posledstviya rasprostraneniya “postpravdy”], Political Exper-tise: POLITEX, Vol. 13, 4, рp. 100‒109. (In Russ.)].
Гельман, В.Я. (2013) Из огня да в по-лымя: российская политика по-сле СССР. СПб: БХВ-Петербург. [Gel'man, V.Ya. (2013) Out of the frying pan into the fire: Russian politics after the USSR [Iz ognya da v polymya: rossiiskaya politika posle SSSR]. St. Petersburg: BKhV-Peterburg Publ. (In Russ.)].
Кастельс, М. (2016) Власть коммуни-кации. Москва: Издательский дом Высшей Школы экономи-ки. [Castells, M. (2016) Commu-nication power [Vlast' kommu-nikatsii]. Moscow: HSE Publish-ing House. (In Russ.)].
Травин, Д.Я. (2016) Просуществует ли путинская система до 2042 года. СПб: Норма. [Travin, D.Ya. (2016) Will the Putin sys-tem exist until 2042? [Prosushchestvuet li putinskaya sistema do 2042 goda?]. St. Pe-tersburg: Norma Publ. (In Russ.)].
Burns, J.P. (1989) The Chinese Com-munist Party’s Nomenklatura System: a documentary study of party control of leadership selec-tion, 1979‒1984. ME Sharpe.
Carothers, T. (2002) ‘The end of the transition paradigm’, Journal of Democracy, 13, рр. 5–21.
Chung-Hon Shih, V. (2008) ‘“Nauseat-ing” displays of loyalty: Monitor-ing the factional bargain through ideological campaigns in China’, The Journal of Politics, 70, рр. 1177–1192.
Cobb, R.W. (1983) Participation in American politics: The dynamics of agenda-building. Johns Hop-kins University Press.
Cobb, R.W., Elder, C.D. (1971) ‘The politics of agenda-building: An alternative perspective for mod-ern democratic theory’, The Journal of Politics, 33, рр. 892–915.
Cox, G.W. (2009) Authoritarian elec-tions and leadership succession, 1975‒2004.
Dahl, R.A. (1989) Democracy and its Critics. Yale University Press.
Diamond, L. (1991) ‘Nigeria’s search for a new political order’, Peace Review, 3, рр. 32–37.
Egorov, G., Guriev, S., Sonin, K. (2009) ‘Why resource-poor dicta-tors allow freer media: A theory and evidence from panel data’, American Political Science Re-view, 103, рр. 645–668.
Gandhi, J., Przeworski, A. (2007) ‘Au-thoritarian institutions and the survival of autocrats’, Compara-tive Political Studies, 40, рр. 1279–1301.
Geddes, B. (2007) ‘What causes de-mocratization’ in The Oxford Handbook of Political Science.
Geddes, B. (1999) ‘What do we know about democratization after twen-ty years?’, Annual Review of Po-litical Science, 2, рр. 115–144.
Gel’man, V. (2015) Authoritarian Rus-sia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Re-gime Changes. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Golosov, G.V. (2017) ‘Authoritarian Learning in the Development of Russia’s Electoral System’, Rus-sian Politics, 2, рр. 182–205.
Kabanov, Y., Romanov, B. (2017). ‘In-teraction Between the Internet and the Political Regime: An Em-pirical Study (1995–2015)’ in In-ternational Conference on Digital Transformation and Global Soci-ety. Springer, pp. 282–291.
Levitsky, S., Way, L.A. (2010) Com-petitive authoritarianism: Hybrid regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge University Press.
Liebman, B.L. (2011) ‘The media and the courts: towards competitive supervision?’, The China Quar-terly, 208, рр. 833–850.
Lorentzen, P. (2014) ‘China’s Strategic Censorship: CHINA’S STRA-TEGIC CENSORSHIP’, Ameri-can Journal of Political Science, 58, рр. 402–414. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12065.
Lu, F., Ma, X. (2015) Keep silent and make a big fortune: Partially free media and an authoritarian intra-elite election.
Marquez, X. (2016) Non-Democratic Politics: Authoritarianism, Dicta-torship and Democratization. Macmillan International Higher Education.
McFaul, M. (2002) ‘The fourth wave of democracy and dictatorship: non-cooperative transitions in the postcommunist world’, World politics, 54, рр. 212–244.
Mill, J.S. (1966) ‘On liberty’ in Rob-son, J.M. (ed.) A Selection of His Works, Springer, pp. 1–147.
Petrova, M. (2008) ‘Inequality and me-dia capture’, Journal of Public Economics, 92, рр. 183–212.
Schatz, E. (2009) ‘The soft authoritari-an tool kit: Agenda-setting power in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan’, Comparative Politics, 41, рр. 203–222.
Schmitter, P.C., Karl, T.L. (1991) ‘What democracy is... and is not’, Journal of Democracy, 2, рр. 75–88.
Shirk, S.L. (2011) Changing media, changing China. Oxford Universi-ty Press.
Siebert, F., Peterson, T.B., Peterson, T., Schramm, W. (1956) Four theo-ries of the press: The authoritari-an, libertarian, social responsibil-ity, and Soviet communist con-cepts of what the press should be and do. University of Illinois press.
Snyder, R., Mahoney, J. (1999) The missing variable: Institutions and the study of regime change. JSTOR.
Svolik, M.W. (2012) The politics of au-thoritarian rule. Cambridge Uni-versity Press.
Svolik, M.W. (2009) ‘Power sharing and leadership dynamics in au-thoritarian regimes’, American Journal of Political Science, 53, рр. 477–494.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The author grants the Publisher of the journal (Perm State University) the right to use their article in the journal, as well as to include the text of the abstract, the full text of the article and information about authors in the "Russian Science Citation Index" (RSCI).
The author agrees to the processing of personal data.
The right to use the journal as a whole belongs to the Publisher and acts indefinitely on the territory of the Russian Federation and beyond in accordance with cl. 1260 of the Russian Federation Civil Code.
There is no author's fee paid for providing the above rights by the author.
The author of the article included in the journal retains the exclusive right to it, regardless of the Publisher's right to use the journal as a whole:
a. The authors retain their copyrights to the article and transfer the right of the first publication along with the article to the journal, while also licensing it on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to distribute this article with the obligatory indication of authorship of the article and reference to the original publication in this journal.
b. The authors retain the right to enter into separate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the version of the text published by this journal (for example, post it in a university archive or publish it in a book), with reference to the original publication in this journal.
c. d. Authors are allowed to post their text on the Internet (for example, in a university archive or on their personal website) before and during the review process by this journal, as this can lead to a fruitful discussion and to higher number of the references to this published work (Please refer to The Effect of Open Access).
Submission of an article by the author implies that they agree for it to be used by the Publisher on the above conditions and to be included in the RSCI system. It also implicates that the author is aware of the terms of its use. The information about the author sent to the Publisher, including by e-mail, is also considered as such consent.
The editorial board posts the full text of the article on the Perm State University site: http://www.psu.ru and in the OJS system at http://press.psu.ru
The publication fee is not collected and fees are not paid. The author's copy is sent to the author to the address provided by them.
