This paper probes the persuasive power of authoritarian propaganda on social media and compares it to a similar campaign by the opposition. We carried out a field experiment during the 2018 presidential elections in Russia by collecting voting intentions and then randomly advertising a pro- and...

Auch wenn die Sanktionen gegen Russland bis jetzt nicht die erhoffte politische Wirkung erzielt haben, lässt das, nach Ansicht von Thieß Petersen, Bertelsmann Stiftung, nicht auf ein Scheitern dieser Sanktionen schließen. Die Sanktionen zeigten bereits ökonomische Wirkungen, wobei die...

What factors determine support for digital governance solutions? And do autocracies differ from democracies in the way the population evaluates digitization initiatives by the state? Building on previous studies, we hypothesize that gaps in the quality of public services and information...

How do independent media affect regime support in an autocracy? We carry out two field experiments in Russia by promoting the country’s only independent online TV channel to a randomized sample of cities and individuals before the 2016 parliamentary elections. In both experiments, we find that...

How do independent media affect regime support in an autocracy? We carry out two field experiments in Russia by promoting the country’s only independent online TV channel to a randomized sample of cities and individuals before the 2016 parliamentary elections. In both experiments, we find that...

How do political elites exploit salient historical events to reactivate collective memories and entrench their power? We study this question using data from the Russian Federation under Putin. We document a substantial recollection campaign of the traumatic transition the Russian population...

To what extent does the degree of authoritarian political support depend on collective memories of a past experience with democracy? And how costly is it for a dictator to manipulate such memories with the help of propaganda? In this paper, we develop a political economy model with endogenous...