Replication Data for: Overestimation of the Level of Democracy among Citizens in Nondemocracies

Overestimation of the level of democracy is prevalent among citizens in nondemocracies. Despite such prevalence, no research to date has systematically documented this phenomenon and examined its determinants. Yet given the renewed interest in the role of legitimacy in authoritarian survival, studying whether and why this phenomenon arises is important to our understanding of authoritarian resilience. I argue that, even in the absence of democratic institutions in nondemocracies, autocrats exercise media control in order to boost their democratic legitimacy. This façade of democracy, in turn, benefits their survival. Combining media freedom data with individual survey response data that include over 30,000 observations from 22 nondemocracies, I find that overestimation of the level of democracy is greater in countries with stronger media control. But highly educated citizens overestimate less. These findings shed light on media control as a strategy for authoritarian survival, and have important implications for modernization theory.

非民主国家的公民普遍存在对民主水平的高估现象。尽管该现象广泛存在，但迄今为止尚无研究对其进行系统性记录并检验其决定因素。鉴于学界重新兴起对合法性在威权政权存续中所扮演角色的关注，探究这一现象是否存在及其成因，对理解威权韧性具有重要意义。本文认为，即便非民主国家未建立民主制度，专制者也会通过实施媒体管控来提升自身的民主合法性。这种民主假象反过来将助力其政权存续。本文将媒体自由数据与覆盖22个非民主国家、逾30000份观测样本的个人调查回复数据相结合，研究发现：媒体管控力度越强的国家，公民对民主水平的高估程度越高；但受教育程度较高的公民，其高估程度相对更低。本研究揭示了媒体管控作为威权存续策略的作用路径，同时对现代化理论具有重要启示价值。