Carrot and Stick: A Model of Censorship and Co-optation

Authoritarian leaders use a variety of tools in their rulings of citizens, including censorship and co-optation. In using these tools, the leader contracts an "authoritarian bargain" with the citizens where it provides citizens with better public goods in exchange for more centralized power. This paper applies the global coordination game to show leader's optimal censorship strategy on her power centralization and public goods provision. An authoritarian leader with intention to attack the existing institutions to centralize her political power needs a high censorship rate to hide her personalistic intention, while at the same time, benefits from a low censorship rate on public goods provision since it serves as a useful channel to gauge public opinions. The paper collects and analyzes novel text data from Chinese social media using machine learning and statistical methods to provide empirical support of the theory. Results show that criticisms on the leader's personalistic behaviors are 42.5% more likely to be censored than criticisms on the government's public goods supply.