No abstract

Politicians often erode democratic institutions to consolidate their personal power through acts like term limit evasions. Violations of fundamental constitutional arrangements, so-called "bright line" institutions, are often expected to result in antigovernment opposition. Then how do leaders evading term limits extend the term and keep their office? I argue that political leaders strategically prevent protests after the initiation of term limit evasions by limiting the free flow of information that is imperative for potential dissidents to collectively mobilize against a leader. Using difference-in-differences with matching for Time-Series Cross-Sectional data, I show that term limit evasions are followed by a marked decrease in a country's freedom of expression and it is more salient in autocracies than in democracies. In addition, using Venezuela as an example, I provide micro-evidence of information control by investigating how topics of opposition media change after termlimit evasion. Automated text analysis shows that a leader evading term limits not only censors threatening political information but also induces the media to offer distracting and apolitical information.

What is the effect of subnational elections on autocratic regime survival? The existing literature suggests that holding subnational elections help foster autocratic regime stability. I argue that the benefit of subnational elections for regime survival is conditional on a lack of media freedom: As the level of media freedom increases, the positive influence of holding subnational elections on regime survival decreases. This is because subnational elections provide local politicians with opportunities to build good reputations, and when good reputations formed at the local level spread to other jurisdictions via relatively free media, citizens can use them as a focal point to coordinate against the regime. Using the quantitative analysis of Time-Series Cross-Sectional data, I find empirical support for my theory.

Autocratization increases threats from marginalized opposition elites whose parties are more incentivized to mobilize the masses. What do autocrats do to counter this threat? I argue that autocrats increase delegitimizing propaganda, information manipulation that exaggerates the disunity of opposition parties when they are involved in internal conflicts. It undermines opposition parties’ legitimacy as a competent alternative that conveys credible information and serves as a focal point of oppositions. To validate my argument, I compare how regime-controlled newspapers in the South Korean dictatorship cover two analogous internal conflicts in a major opposition party that occurred before and after autocratization. Using word embeddings, I find that newspaper reports after autocratization were more likely to associate the opposition party with negative words related to disunity