Replication Data for: Transparency for Authoritarian Stability: Open Government Information and Contention with Institutions in China

This dataset contains codes and data that allow users to replicate all empirical results presented in the paper, including the appendix. Please refer to README.txt for the content of the dataset. Paper abstract: Conventional wisdom holds that authoritarian states bear the cost to social stability for information disclosure. This study investigates the effect of an increasingly common trans- parency initiative in authoritarian countries—open government information (OGI). Through publishing policy information, OGI allows citizens to identify illegal government behavior. Drawing from the Chinese case, I theorize that while such policy transparency reveals whether governments violate laws, it encourages the use of institutional dispute resolution channels. It redirects popular discontent from the streets to institutions, fostering rather than threatening social stability in autocracies. Using online and in-the-field survey experiments about OGI on land-taking compensation, I show that policy transparency improves citizens’ preference for legal and political institutions and causes them to prioritize institutions over protest when they have grievances against the government. Multiple findings about the mechanisms suggest that policy information provides evidence, which increases citizens’ perceived fairness of institu- tions in resolving their specific cases.