In her new book, Fuzzy Authoritarian Rule, Dawn Brancati examines how uncertainty about government restrictions shapes the way citizens understand and respond to repression in authoritarian countries, including China and Egypt.
Brancati and her co-author argue that when citizens do not know exactly which views or actions may lead to punishment, that uncertainty can affect how they interpret a government’s willingness to repress dissent. To examine these dynamics, the authors conducted two laboratory experiments in Egypt, testing influential behavioral theories about the relationship between uncertainty, fear and negative emotion.
Their findings suggest that repression may be less effective at discouraging certain forms of dissent when governments are most explicit about their willingness to punish them. The research offers new insight into how uncertainty and information shape the effectiveness of repression under authoritarian rule.