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本国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探讨其决定因素。然而，鉴于学界对合法性在威权政权存续中作用的重新关注，研究这一现象是否存在及其成因，对于我们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，独裁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。通过将媒体自由数据与涵盖22个非民主国家、超过3万份观测值的个体问卷调查数据相结合，本文研究发现：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，其高估程度则相对更低。上述研究结果揭示了媒体管控作为威权存续策略的作用机制，并对现代化理论具有重要启示意义。