Title:      Opium for the Masses: How Foreign Free Media Can Stabilize
Authoritarian Regimes

Authors:    Holger Lutz Kern, Jens Hainmueller

Entrydate:  2007-04-11 09:47:39

Keywords:   instrumental variables, causal inference, local average
response function, media effects, East Germany, democratization

Abstract:   A common claim in the democratization literature is that
foreign free media undermine authoritarian rule. No reliable
micro-level evidence on this topic exists, however, since independent
survey research is rarely possible in authoritarian regimes and
self-selection into media consumption complicates causal inferences.
In this case study of the impact of West German television on
political attitudes in communist East Germany, we address these
problems by making use of previously secret survey data and a natural
experiment. While most East Germans were able to tune in to West
German broadcasts, some of them were cut off from West German
television due to East Germany's topography. We exploit this
plausibly exogenous variation to estimate the impact of West German
television on East Germans' political attitudes using LARF
instrumental variable estimators. Contrary to conventional wisdom,
East Germans who watched West German television were \emph{more}
satisfied with life in East Germany and the communist regime. To
explain this surprising finding, we demonstrate that West German
television's role in transmitting political information not available
in the state-controlled communist media was insignificant and that
television primarily served as a means of entertainment for East
Germans. Archival material on the reaction of the East German regime
to the availability of West German television corroborates our
argument.

http://polmeth.wustl.edu/retrieve.php?id=690