Propaganda in Autocracies
Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief

Drawing on the largest collection of propaganda ever assembled, this book explains why propaganda varies so dramatically across autocracies.

Erin Baggott Carter (Author), Brett L. Carter (Author)

9781009271240, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 September 2023

350 pages, 84 b/w illus. 52 tables
28 x 19 x 2.5 cm, 0.728 kg

'The literature on authoritarian rule typically considers elections, repression, and propaganda as disparate tools of staying in power. In this path-breaking work, Carter and Carter link them together and show that the degree of electoral competition and repression capacity affected how autocracies deployed propaganda. Weaving together a massive data set on propaganda, the latest methodologies in textual analysis and survey experiments, as well as deep knowledge of a number of authoritarian regimes, this book tells a compelling story of the strategic use of propaganda to convey credibility or menace as these regimes saw fit.' Victor Shih, Ho Miu Lam Chair and Associate Professor in China and Pacific Relations, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego

A dictator's power is secure, the authors begin in this muscular, impressive study, only as long as citizens believe in it. When citizens suddenly believe otherwise, a dictator's power is anything but, as the Soviet Union's collapse revealed. This conviction – that power rests ultimately on citizens' beliefs – compels the world's autocrats to invest in sophisticated propaganda. This study draws on the first global data set of autocratic propaganda, encompassing nearly eight million newspaper articles from fifty-nine countries in six languages. The authors document dramatic variation in propaganda across autocracies: in coverage of the regime and its opponents, in narratives about domestic and international life, in the threats of violence issued to citizens, and in the domestic events that shape it. The book explains why Russian President Vladimir uses Donald Trump as a propaganda tool and why Chinese state propaganda is more effusive than any point since the Cultural Revolution.

Part I. Foundations: 1. Persuasion and domination
2. A theory of autocratic propaganda
3. A global dataset of autocratic propaganda
Part II. The Political Origins of Propaganda Strategies: 4. The politics of pro-regime propaganda
5. Narrating the domestic
6. Narrating the world
7. Threatening citizens with repression
Part III. The Propaganda Calendar: 8. The propagandist's dilemma
9. Memory and forgetting
Part IV. Propaganda, Protest, and the Future: 10. Propaganda and protest
11. Conclusion
List of figures
List of tables.

Subject Areas: Press & journalism [KNTJ], Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB]