How do the Internet and social media affect political outcomes? We review empirical
evidence from the recent political economy literature, focusing primarily on work that …

Media censorship is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. We conduct a field experiment in
China to measure the effects of providing citizens with access to an uncensored internet. We …

In 1999, as a freshman at Peking University, I lived on the Changping campus together with
about eight hundred other social sciences and humanities majors. The campus, located on …

During the COVID-19 pandemic, various conspiracy theories have been circulating through
social media platforms. Scholars have raised concerns about the negative ramifications of …

The study of popular support for authoritarian regimes has long relied on the assumption
that respondents provide truthful answers to surveys. However, when measuring regime …

Crisis motivates people to track news closely, and this increased engagement can expose
individuals to politically sensitive information unrelated to the initial crisis. We use the case …

How do foreign political events shape voters' evaluation of policies whose outcomes are
hard to observe? We argue that policy-specific political processes abroad provide …

Are representatives in authoritarian legislatures encouraged to take positions on salient
issues? More generally, why do some autocracies allow public debate on hot topics at all …

Although China's social credit system (SCS) is widely portrayed by Western media as
repressive surveillance, recent studies show that it receives high levels of support among …

As the single ruling party, the Communist Party plays an essential role in public
administration and policy making in China. Under general secretary Xi Jinping's program of …