Authoritarian cue effect of state repression

Bibliographic Data

ID6232098
AuthorsJiangnan Zhu (0000-0002-5981-6886, Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration The University of Hong Kong Pok Fu Lam Hong Kong), Steve Bai (Ph.D. Student, Department of Political Science Yale University, Political Science New Haven Connecticut USA), Siqin Kang (0000-0002-2773-4966, Assistant Professor, The School of Humanities and Social Sciences Chinese University of Hong Kong‐Shenzhen Guangdong China), Juan Wang (0000-0001-8330-6707), Wang Juan (0000-0001-5253-1549, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science McGill University Montreal Canada), Kaixiao Liu (Ph.D. Student, Department of Government Harvard University Cambridge Massachusetts USA), K Y Liu (Harvard University)
Year2025
Volume69
Issue4
Pages1420-1434
Publication date2025-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ajps.12916
OpenAlexW4402665995
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited47

State repression in autocracies has long been assumed to elicit explicit or implicit disapproval from citizens. Recent studies suggest that authoritarian governments can garner support for repressive policies through active information manipulation or exploiting social cleavages. However, is it possible for citizens to support repression even without government manipulation? We propose the “authoritarian cue effect,” arguing that citizens’ attitudes toward state repression can be endogenously shaped by instances of state repression, which may be interpreted as cueing messages signaling the regime's disapproval of the punished behaviors. Using a novel belief correction survey experiment, we empirically demonstrate that state repression can induce the public to pick up on cues and automatically adopt the state's stance, perceiving repressed behavior as having more negative externalities and supporting state repression more. This cue effect suggests that authoritarian state repression can self‐legitimize and evade public opinion backlash in a less costly manner than previously presumed

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Political science · Politics · Psychological repression · State (computer science · Biochemistry · Chemistry · Computer Science · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology