Disinformation and Regime Survival

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241252811
• Author: Yuko Sato,Felix Wiebrecht
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(3) 1010–1025

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241252811

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Disinformation and Regime Survival

Yuko Sato

1

and Felix Wiebrecht

2



Abstract

Disinformation has transformed into a global issue and while it is seen as a growing concern to democracy today,

autocrats have long used it as a part of their propaganda repertoire. Yet, no study has tested the effect of disinformation

on regime stability and breakdown beyond country-specif‌ic studies. Drawing on novel measures from the Digi tal Society

Project (DSP) estimating the levels of disinformation disseminated by governments across 148 countries between 2000–

2022 and from the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset, we provide the f‌irst global comparative study of

disinformation and survival of democratic and authoritarian regimes, respectively. The results show that in authoritarian

regimes, disinformation helps rulers to stay in power as regimes with higher levels of disinformation are less likely to

experience democratization episodes. In democracies, on the other hand, disinformation increases the probabili ty of

autocratization onsets. As such, this study is the f‌irst to provide comparative evidence on the negative effects of

disinformation on democracy as well as on the prospects of democratization.

Keywords

disinformation, propaganda, democratization, autocratization, regime survival

Introduction

Disinformation by political actors is a growing concern

worldwide, and its deleterious effects were becoming

palpable even before the COVID-19 pandemic and

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (e.g., Bennett and

Livingston 2018). Here, we concur with prior concep-

tualizations of disinformation and def‌ine it as purposefully

created information that “has the function of misleading”

(Fallis 2015, 422) and is “intentionally and verif‌iably

false”(Allcott and Gentzkow 2017, 213). Although

disinformation has long been part of dictatorships’pro-

paganda machines, autocrats appear to have become more

blatant in “spinning”false narratives in attempts to secure

their hold on power (e.g., Guriev and Treisman 2022;

Tenove 2020). Anti-pluralists and aspiring autocrats in

democracies such as the United States, Brazil, Germany,

and Sweden are also increasingly spreading “fake news”

(e.g., Larsson 2020;Zimmermann and Kohring 2020).

Targeted campaigns abroad by regimes such as Russia,

China, and Iran are adding further stress to democracies

(e.g., Hjorth and Adler-Nissen 2019;Pomerantsev 2015).

As information is a fundamental resource for voters to

hold governments accountable, disinformation is char-

acterized as one of the key challenges to democracy (e.g.,

Benkler, Faris, and Roberts 2018).

Despite the abundance of disinformation and the

growing concern around it, comparative research on the

issue and its political consequences is rare (for exceptions

see Piazza 2022,Humprecht, Esser, and Van Aelst 2020;

Hunter 2023). In autocracies, disinformation is an in-

herent part of propaganda, but to date, empirical research

has almost exclusively studied the cases of Russia and

China (e.g., Huang 2015;Huang 2018;Rozenas and

Stukal 2019). Here, the primary focus of these studies

is on governments’strategies for information control and

dissemination. At the same time, the macro-level political

consequences, such as its effect on regime stability, have

been understudied. In democracies, most prior research

has focused on questions at the individual level, such as

voters’exposure and susceptibility to disinformation (e.g.,

Enders et al. 2021;Erlich and Garner 2023;Hjorth and

Adler-Nissen 2019), but also less on its consequences on

the political system. Thus, it remains debated whether

1

Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Japan

2

University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Corresponding Author:

Felix Wiebrecht, University of Liverpool, 8 Abercromby Square,

Liverpool L69 3BX, UK.

Email: felix.wiebrecht@liverpool.ac.uk

disinformation poses an immediate threat to democracy or

remains a marginal phenomenon without far-reaching

consequences (e.g., Allcott and Gentzkow 2017;

Jungherr and Schroeder 2021;Lanoszka 2019).

In this paper, we seek to analyze the consequences of

disinformation used by governments on political sys-

tems more specif‌ically and combine insights from both

regime types into a common framework of the effect of

disinformation on regime survival. We argue that dis-

information proves to be an effective tool for dictators

to retain their hold on power and show that democra-

tization is less likely in authoritarian regimes that

disseminate more disinformation. On the other hand,

we also echo concerns surrounding growing disinfor-

mation in democracies and suggest that higher levels of

disinformation are associated with onsets of autocrat-

ization. Taken together, we suggest that disinformation

is detrimental to democracy across regime types. In

order to test this argument, we go beyond the existing

China/Russia-(forautocracies)andUS-centrism(for

democracies) of prior studies and employ a comparative

study. Wedraw on measure s of disinformation from the

Digital Society Project (DSP) (Mechkova et al. 2022)

and combine it with the Episodes of Regime Trans-

formation (ERT) dataset (Edgell et al. 2023)that

identif‌ies episodes of autocratization as well as liber-

alization. These datasets allow us to conduct a cross-

national time-series study to systematically examine the

effects of disinformation on regime survival across

148 countries between 2000 and 2022.

Empirically, we f‌ind that once we disaggregate the

sample by regime types, our results show support for the

regime-stabilizing function of disinformation in authori-

tarian regimes, making democratization episodes overall

less likely. In democracies, higher levels of disinformation

increase the probability of autocratization onsets and

democratic breakdowns. To explain this f‌inding, we point

to the fact that disinformation in democracies promotes

polarization in society, which inf‌lates the risk of onsets of

autocratization episodes. These results are robust to the

inclusion of a number of control variables, alternative

empirical modelings, and an instrumental variable (IV)

analysis that addresses endogeneity concerns.

The contributions of this study are twofold. First, we

overcome the scope limitations of previous studies and

add further generalizability to prior studies on disinfor-

mation. Research on authoritarian regimes’use of dis-

information is mostly based on f‌indings from China and

Russia (e.g., Huang 2015;Rozenas and Stukal 2019)

while studies on disinformation’s threat to democracy

primarily emanate from the United States (e.g., Tucker

et al. 2018). As such, this study is the f‌irst to identify the

link between disinformation and regime survival globally

as well as across autocracies and democracies.

Second, the f‌indings from this study contribute to

debates about the impact of disinformation. Although

research on authoritarian regimes has identif‌ied propa-

ganda as a pillar of regime stability (e.g., Carter and Carter

2021;Huang 2015), others noted that propaganda and

especially disinformation can also backf‌ire (e.g., Huang

2018;Wang and Huang 2021). Adding to this debate, we

f‌ind that across autocracies, disinformation can be an

effective tool for dictators and is more likely to stabilize

autocracies. Likewise, while many identify disinforma-

tion as a major challenge for democracies (e.g., Bennett

and Livingston 2018), others see the reach of disinfor-

mation, and consequently, its inf‌luence as limited (e.g.,

Allcott and Gentzkow 2017;Grinberg et al. 2019;Guess,

Nagler, and Tucker 2019;Lanoszka 2019). Despite such

mixed results, we highlight that disinformation is asso-

ciated with severe consequences, namely, the onset of

autocratization episodes and democratic breakdown.

In the following, this paper will introduce its theo-

retical framework and hypotheses of how disinformation

affects regime stability both in autocracies and democ-

racies. Next, we introduce the empirical strategy to test

these arguments. Then, we present the statistical results of

the effect of disinformation on regime survival. Finally,

we discuss the possible implications of our f‌indings in the

conclusion.

Def‌ining Disinformation

Especially since the presidency of Donald Trump, dis-

information and “fake news”have received heightened

attention in popular as well as academic discourses. While

notions such as “misinformation,”“disinformation,”

“conspiracy theory,”and “propaganda”are often used

interchangeably, it is important to retain conceptual

clarity. Starting from the broadest category, we follow

prior research in this line of work and def‌ine misinfor-

mation as claims “that contradict or distort common

understandings of verif‌iable facts”(Persily and Tucker

2020, 10). Disinformation, then, is a subcategory of

misinformation with the difference being that it is pur-

posely disseminated (e.g., Persily and Tucker 2020;

Tucker et al. 2018). In other words, both concepts describe

false claims but while misinformation may be shared

accidentally and without malicious intent, disinformation

“has the function of misleading”(Fallis 2015, 422) and

deceiving. Although the question of intent may be diff‌icult

to prove, “organized attempts”of disseminating false

information can be seen as a good indicator of such

(Persily and Tucker 2020). Typical examples of disin-

formation may include Russia’s strategic disinformation

campaigns domestically and abroad (e.g., Pomerantsev

2015) but also unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud in

the US (e.g., Berlinski et al. 2021).

Sato and Wiebrecht 1011