The Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best paper presented at the previous year’s Annual Meeting.
Citation from the Award Committee:
In their paper, “Collateral Censorship: Theory and Evidence From Venezuela.” Kronick and Marshall provide a fascinating theoretical explanation and test of how twenty-first-century autocrats maintain power through a process of cooperation and control of information.
Their research develops a new theory that reconciles the tradeoff faced by regimes who have an interest in censoring unfavorable media, but must also maintain favorability among the electorate. Although censorship can aid incumbent leaders by removing news critical of their regime, they pay a potential cost when a censored media outlet is beloved by voters—often as a source of entertainment. The extent of this cost is dependent on the structure of the overall media market and relative popularity of media content. Thus, Kronick and Marshall provide a theoretical framework that explains why we observe cross-country variation in the electoral effects of censorship.
The theory is tested by examining the censorship of the popular Radio Caracas Television in Venezuela (RCTV) by Hugo Chavez. They find that voters punished Chavez for taking away their valued content. However, exploring 4,000 hours of newscasts leveraging large language models, they show that the loss of RCTV created more positive sentiments toward the government, as less critical news became more prevalent. Thus, although Chavez faced a personal penalty for the removal of a popular media outlet among voters who lost access to RCTV, his regime benefited from less critical coverage of domestic political issues.
The paper is exemplary in making a connection between the theoretical model and the empirical tests of the model. It advances the literature by showing not only the effects of censorship on electoral outcomes, but also the content of media outlets that remain in the market. The analysis anticipates the reader’s questions with a series of robustness checks. It offers a high level of detail in ensuring the reader understands the connection between different data components and tests of the theory. It’s an exemplary paper, and we’re pleased to recognize this this paper as the best paper presented at the 2023 APSA Annual Meeting.
Dorothy Kronick is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, U.C. Berkeley. She studies contemporary Latin America, focusing on Venezuelan politics and the politics of crime and policing. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, before which she got her PhD at Stanford University. Her work has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Science, and Political Science Research and Methods, among other outlets. Her writing on Venezuelan politics has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
John Marshall is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics and political economy, and spans elections in developing and developed contexts. He studies the causes and consequences of information flows between citizens, media, and government in democracies, combining quasi-experimental and experimental designs with theoretical models to identify and help interpret causal relationships. His research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Politics, and Review of Economics and Statistics.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Cecilia Hyunjung Mo (Chair) of the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Mark Daniel Ramirez of Arizona State University, and Dr. Amanda Wintersieck of Virginia Commonwealth University.