Replication Data for: Gender and Political Compliance under Authoritarian Rule

When autocrats do not impose explicit rules of behavior on their subjects, what does political compliance look like? Existing research suggests that such conditions generate uncertainty, leading risk-adverse individuals to self-censor in an effort to minimize the risk of punishment. In this paper, we find that women and men differ in how they express political compliance under conditions of uncertainty. Focusing on Confucius Institute teachers who are given broad objectives but no specific rules of political behavior, we use interviews, a global survey, and an experiment to show that women express compliance by increasing uncensored discussions to persuade host country students toward the Chinese regime’s point of view. In contrast, men comply by vociferously defending the party line and censoring further discussions. These gendered strategies of political compliance are rooted in the differing gender socialization experiences of men and women, who face divergent expectations on how they should interact with others.