Replication Data for: The Long-Term Impact of Mobilization and Repression on Political Trust

Data and code to replicate results reported in "The Long-Term Impact of Mobilization and Repression on Political Trust" Abstract: Authoritarian regimes respond to threatening social movements with repression and censorship. In many cases, failed movements are effectively erased from the public memory. Do such movements affect long-term attitudes? We use a survey of college graduates to measure the impact of a failed student movement. Some of our respondents began college immediately before a major protest; others started after the movement had been suppressed. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity, we find that individuals who attended college during the movement are significantly less likely to trust the government, more than twenty-five years later, than individuals who enrolled after the protests. The effects are strongest for trust in the central government, and weakest for local government. These results are robust to a range of specifications, and show that the experience of mass mobilization and state repression can have a long-term impact on public attitudes, even if the event in question remains taboo. Acknowledgmenents: The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the NCCR Democracy Project at the University of Zurich, the "Innovations of Data Protection Regulations" Research Project for Young Scholars from the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences of Wuhan University, and the Academic Research Foundation from the School of Journalism and Communication at Wuhan University. We thank Alex Zhao for excellent research assistance.

本数据集包含用于复现《动员与镇压对政治信任的长期影响》（"The Long-Term Impact of Mobilization and Repression on Political Trust"）一文研究结果的数据与代码。
摘要：威权政权会以镇压与审查手段应对具有威胁性的社会运动。在诸多案例中，失败的社会运动往往会被从公共记忆中有效抹去。这类运动是否会对公众的长期态度产生影响？我们通过针对大学毕业生的问卷调查，衡量一场失败的学生运动所产生的影响。部分受访者恰在一场重大抗议活动爆发前夕开启大学生涯，其余受访者则在该运动被镇压后才入学。借助模糊回归断点（fuzzy regression discontinuity）设计，我们发现，相较于抗议活动结束后入学的个体，在运动期间就读大学的个体，在二十五年后对政府的信任度显著更低。该效应对中央政府信任的影响最为强烈，对地方政府信任的影响则最弱。上述结果在一系列模型设定下均保持稳健，表明即便相关事件仍属禁忌话题，大规模动员与国家镇压的经历仍会对公众态度产生长期影响。
致谢：作者衷心感谢苏黎世大学NCCR民主项目、武汉大学人文社会科学研究院青年学者“数据保护规制创新”研究项目，以及武汉大学新闻与传播学院学术研究基金的支持。感谢Alex Zhao提供的卓越研究协助。