East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society

Oct 7 Workshop

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East Asia Workshop: Politics, Economy and Society Presents

 

Lying or Believing? Measuring Preference Falsification from a Political Purge in China

 

Junyan Jiang

PhD Student, Department of Political Science

University of Chicago

 

4:30-6pm, Tuesday

October 7, 2014

Pick Lounge, 5828 South University Ave.

 

 

Abstract

Despite its wide usage in explaining some nontrivial dynamics in nondemocratic systems, preference falsification remains an empirical myth for students of authoritarian politics. We provide to our knowledge the first quantitative study of preference falsification in an authoritarian setting using a rare coincidence between a major political purge in Shanghai, China, and the administration of a nationwide survey in 2006. We construct two synthetic measures for expressed and actual support from a set of survey questions, and track the changes in these measures before and after the purge. We find that a dramatic increase in expressed support was paralleled by an equally evident decline in actual support in post-purge Shanghai. We interpret this divergence as evidence for the presence of preference falsification. We further find that the variations in the degree of preference falsification are jointly predicted by one’s access to one’s information environment and his/her structural vulnerability to state sanctions. Using two additional surveys conducted over the span of a year, we further show that there was substantial deterioration in political trust in Shanghai six months after the purge, which suggests that falsification could not sustain public support in the long run.

 

Workshop website: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/eastasia/

Student coordinator: Wen Xie (wxie@uchicago.edu)

Faculty sponsors: Dali Yang, Dingxin Zhao and Zheng Michael Song

 

This presentation is sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for East Asian Studies. Persons with disabilities who believe they may need assistance please contact the student coordinator in advance.

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