MEDIA FREEDOM IN THE SHADOW OF A COUP

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Boleslavsky, Raphael; Shadmehr, Mehdi; Sonin, Konstantin
• 署名单位: University of Miami; University of Chicago; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; HSE University (National Research University Higher School of Economics)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvaa040
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 1782-1815
• 关键词: Bayesian persuasion; information design; regime change; global games; COORDINATION; POLITICS; protest; POWER; manipulation; institutions

摘要

Popular protests and palace coups are the two domestic threats to dictators. We show that free media, which informs citizens about their rulers, is a double-edged sword that alleviates one threat, but exacerbates the other. Informed citizens may protest against a ruler, but they may also protest to restore her after a palace coup. We develop a model in which citizens engage in a regime-change global game, and media freedom is a ruler's instrument for Bayesian persuasion, used to manage the competing risks of coups and protests. A coup switches the status quo from being in the ruler's favor to being against her. This introduces convexities in the ruler's Bayesian persuasion problem, causing her to benefit from an informed citizenry. Rulers tolerate freer press when citizens are pessimistic about them, or coups signal information about them to citizens.