IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/diedps/334475.html

E-government tools, authoritarian propaganda and regime support: Experimental evidence from Turkey

Author

Listed:
  • Sinanoglu, Semuhi
  • von Schiller, Armin

Abstract

How do e-government tools that enable direct online communication with the executive affect citizens' support for autocracy? On the one hand, such centralised digital government tools may sway public opinion in favour of strongman rule at the expense of autocratic institutions; on the other hand, such participation and responsiveness may unintentionally unveil a wide range of issues in the country, undermining trust in the regime. We examine an electronic platform in Turkey, CIMER, that allows citizens to submit petitions and complaints, send messages to the president, and propose policies and programmes. We conducted a well-powered online survey experiment with a nationally representative sample (N≈4,600) that estimates the effects of different types of regime propaganda around this e-portal on attitudinal and quasi-behavioural outcomes. The results suggest that propaganda through CIMER improves diffuse support for the regime and generates behavioural compliance, even among opposition voters. However, these positive effects accrue to regime institutions rather than to Erdoğan personally as the executive's personalistic leader. On certain dimensions, the propaganda backfires among the regime's core support groups, eroding their perceptions of Erdoğan's popularity as a leader. These results have major implications for the expected downstream effects of these types of digital tools on regime stability and legitimacy, and they add to the growing warnings about holding overly optimistic views concerning the effects of digitalisation on democracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Sinanoglu, Semuhi & von Schiller, Armin, 2025. "E-government tools, authoritarian propaganda and regime support: Experimental evidence from Turkey," IDOS Discussion Papers 35/2025, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:diedps:334475
    DOI: 10.23661/idp35.2025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/334475/1/1946243884.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.23661/idp35.2025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Malesky, Edmund J. & Todd, Jason Douglas & Tran, Anh, 2023. "Can Elections Motivate Responsiveness in a Single-Party Regime? Experimental Evidence from Vietnam," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 117(2), pages 497-517, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ludvig Norman, 2025. "Reconsidering mechanisms in social science research: the varied uses of an explanatory metaphor," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 1695-1712, April.
    2. Michael Callen & Jonathan L. Weigel & Noam Yuchtman, 2024. "Experiments About Institutions," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 16(1), pages 105-131, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:diedps:334475. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ditubde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.