Publicity-driven Government Accountability in China

The Institute of East Asian Studies will hold a talk about government accountability in China.

Speaker: Greg Distelhorst, Ph.D. candidate, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This study shows how negative publicity (or the threat thereof) makes China’s unelected officials more responsive to citizens. Between the news media and the activities of nonprofessional internet users, negligent or malfeasant officials in contemporary China are under threat of disclosure of their activities, which in turn leads to public opprobrium, arrested career advancement, and even criminal liability. To test the hypothesis that negative publicity is career-threatening, two groups of Chinese bureaucrats are targeted in a survey experiment. The experiment finds that bureaucrats perceive complaints from journalists to be more damaging to their careers than those of ordinary citizens or other social elites. By highlighting the role of top-down punishments, publicity-driven accountability shows how the bureaucratic discipline associated with effective authoritarian governance also provides a fulcrum for society to discipline officials from below.