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Academic Articles

What Makes Anticorruption Punishment Popular? Individual-Level Evidence from China

 

Lily L. Tsai, Minh Trinh, and Shiyao Liu published a paper in the Journal of Politics on anti-corruption in China.

November 2021 / Lily L. Tsai, Minh Trinh, Shiyao Liu

Paper: “What makes anticorruption popular? Individual-level evidence from China”. MIT News provided coverage of this publication and the article is available online. 

Abstract

How does punishment of corruption help to build public support in authoritarian regimes? We outline two primary mechanisms. Instrumentally, the ability to pursue anticorruption initiatives to the end signals government capacity. Deontologically, anticorruption punishment signals moral commitments. Through a novel experiment design for mediation analysis embedded in a series of conjoint experiments conducted in China, we find individual-level evidence to support both mechanisms. Specifically, we find that Chinese citizens positively view local government officials who punish their corrupt subordinates and that this positive view arises out of the perception that these officials are both competent in their jobs and morally committed to citizens’ value. The preference for anticorruption punishment is substantial compared to other sources of public support in authoritarian regimes—economic performance, welfare provision, and institutions for political participation—suggesting that it could become a popular strategy among autocrats.

Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash.

Related Work

  • News August 2021

    [MIT News] How Authoritarian Leaders Maintain Support

    Study finds public anticorruption campaigns bolster leaders, even when such measures lack tangible results.

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