Replication data for: Conditional Receptivity to Citizen Participation: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in China

An increasing number of scholars have established that authoritarian regimes employ quasi-democratic institutions as part of their efforts to retain power. However, we know little about the potential variation among institutions providing citizens with opportunities for voice and the conditions under which such institutions are true channels of responsiveness. In this article, we develop and test the concept of \"receptivity,\" that is, whether autocrats are willing to incorporate citizen preferences into policy, using a list experiment of 1,377 provincial- and city-level leaders in China. Contrary to expectation, we find that leaders are similarly receptive to citizen suggestions obtained through either formal institutions or the Internet unless they perceive antagonism between the state and citizens, in which case receptivity to input from the Internet declines, while receptivity to formal institutions remains unchanged. Our findings show that whether quasi-democratic institutions are mere window-dressing or true channels of responsiveness depends on the perceived quality of state-society relations.

越来越多的学者已证实，威权政权会将准民主制度（quasi-democratic institutions）作为巩固权力的手段之一。然而，学界对于为民众提供发声渠道的各类制度之间的潜在差异，以及此类制度真正成为政策回应渠道的前提条件，仍知之甚少。本文依托针对中国1377名省市两级领导干部开展的列表实验（list experiment），构建并检验了“回应性”这一概念——即威权统治者是否愿意将民众偏好纳入政策制定环节。与既有研究预期相悖的是，我们发现，除非感知到国家与民众之间存在对立情绪，否则领导干部对于通过正式制度或互联网渠道获取的民众建议，会展现出同等程度的回应性。当感知到对立情绪时，针对互联网渠道反馈的回应性会出现下降，而针对正式制度的回应性则保持不变。本研究结果表明，准民主制度究竟只是装点门面的表面摆设，还是真正的政策回应渠道，取决于统治者对国家-社会关系（state-society relations）质量的感知。