Political Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: The Spatial-Temporal Dimension of Trouble

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021989762
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021989762

Comparative Political Studies

2021, Vol. 54(8) 1362 –1392

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414021989762

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Article

Political Self-Censorship

in Authoritarian States:

The Spatial-Temporal

Dimension of Trouble

Charles Chang1 and Melanie Manion2

Abstract

We theorize and measure a situational self-censorship that varies across

spatial-temporal political contexts. Schelling’s insight that distinctive times

and places function as focal points has generated a literature explaining how

activists coordinate for protest in authoritarian states. Our population of

interest is not activists but ordinary citizens, who, we assume, are risk-

averse and prefer to avoid trouble. Focal points rally activists for political

expression. By contrast, we theorize, ordinary citizens exercise greater

than usual political self-censorship at focal points, to avoid punishment as

troublemakers. We test our theory by leveraging geotagged smartphone

posts of Beijing netizens on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, to estimate

precisely if, when, where, and how citizens engage in political talk. We use

a difference-in-differences strategy that compares smartphone political talk

at and away from focal places before and after focal times. We find netizens

self-censor political talk significantly more at potentially troublesome spatial-

temporal focal points.

Keywords

self-censorship, focal points, authoritarianism, China

1Duke Kunshan University, Jiangsu, China

2Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Melanie Manion, Vor Broker Family Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Duke

University, 140 Science Drive, 294F Gross Hall, Box 90204, Durham, NC 27708, USA.

Email: melanie.manion@duke.edu

989762CPSXXX10.1177/0010414021989762Comparative Political StudiesChang and Manion

research-article2021

Chang and Manion 1363

Introduction

Self-censorship is about the tradeoff between expression and avoiding trouble.

An important argument in political science is that authoritarian states spawn a

culture of political self-censorship: fearing punishment from the state for air-

ing potentially objectionable views, citizens engage in preference falsification

in their political talk or opt out of such talk altogether (Arendt, 1973; Havel,

1985; Kuran, 1995; Solzhenitsyn, 1975; Wedeen, 1999). How does this model

fare after 1989? In that year, disgruntled citizens in Soviet-bloc countries saw,

in increasingly larger crowds, how large was the population of like-minded

malcontents (Kuran, 1991; Lohmann, 1994)—and ushered in regime collapse.

We focus on China, a powerful authoritarian state that survived its challenge

of large insistent crowds in 1989 and has so far adroitly managed the social

media challenge that helped coordinate uprisings against authoritarian regimes

in North Africa and the Middle East in 2010 and 2011.

We begin with Schelling’s (1960) recognition that times and places can

function as focal points, facilitating coordination without communication, an

insight that has inspired numerous studies of collective action in authoritarian

settings (e.g., Beissinger, 2002; Javeline, 2003; Tucker, 2007), including

China (e.g., Carter & Carter, 2020; Truex, 2019). In the literature, focal points

are rallying points that coordinate activists, who show up, even as focal times

and places reduce surprise and thereby raise the stakes for political expres-

sion (Carter & Carter, 2020). Our population of interest is not activists but

ordinary citizens who, we assume, are politically risk-averse. Given Beijing’s

social order obsession and preparedness to repress crowds, we assume they

do what they can to not show up when and where the stakes are high. As

Beijing also prefers they not show up, it does what it can to cue them about

when and where a crowd is a greater than usual concern.

We assume some amount of baseline self-censorship, even as Beijing

now gives ordinary citizens substantial latitude for political expression. We

theorize and measure the greater than usual amount of self-censorship by

ordinary citizens at the intersection of focal times and places. Beijing’s

Tiananmen Square on the recent thirtieth anniversary of the June 4 crushing

of protests is an example of an extremely sensitive and highly risky spatial-

temporal intersection. At such times and places, ordinary citizens know the

state is especially watchful for planned protests, spontaneous demonstra-

tions, public activism, or a chance utterance that may “stir up” a crowd.

They self-censor their political talk because they perceive a greater than

usual risk of state punishment as participants in a crowd of troublemakers.

The situationally aware self-censorship we analyze here, which we call

focal-point self-censorship, is intuitive and broadly relevant beyond the