Censorship in Hybrid Authoritarian Regimes: The Role of Voter Mobilization

Abstract

This paper explores censorship policies in authoritarian states in which the incumbent, endowed with power to censor the media, competes against a challenger in a possibly unfair election. In our model we consider partisan voters (of both the incumbent and the challenger) who prefer their own candidate in power regardless of the candidates’ abilities, and moderate voters who prefer the candidate with higher ability in power. In our analysis we first examine how partisans and moderates’ voting choices and turnout depend on the information revealed by the media. We then derive the incumbent’s optimal censorship policy. Our analysis shows that the incumbent does not necessarily censor favorable information about the challenger. In particular, when the degree of polarization between partisan groups is high, the incumbent may find it optimal to censor unfavorable information about the challenger’s competency.