UC San Diego

The manuscript contains three essays on democratic erosion and autocratic con- solidation. In the first paper, I propose a methodology to solicit preference over sensitive topics and validate it in a hard case (China). I show that policy preference in China is well configured, as I observe single peaked preferences over several policy domains. All else equal, citizens in China display a distaste toward recent autocratization within the country (e.g. removal of the President’s term limits), and are willing to sacrifice their preferred policy in exchange for more constraints on the politicians. However, term limit is a polarizing issue among the citizens. While removal of term limits for the President causes concerns for certain citizens, it is not a concern to regime hardliners.

In the second paper, I explore how citizens perceive democratic erosion in a developing democracy. I show that when events related to democratic erosion happen, citizens are more concerned if the event is immediately consequential to how democracy operates in the daily life. In the context of the Philippines, citizens are more concerned if the President endorses vote buying, or allows political dynasty. However, events such as court packing are less likely to raise the alarm bell for the public. I also find that proregime respondents display less concern over incidents related to democratic erosion, and citizens' decision to hold the incumbent accountable is moderated by contextual factors such as the unemployment rate.

The third paper zooms in on one particular anti-democratic practice, vote buying, because it is perhaps one of the more obvious attacks on democratic norms. Using a field experiment in the Philippine local elections, I show that an anti-vote buying campaign targeted at the politicians has limited effects on vote buying incidents, but it results in downstream impact on electoral outcomes and voter turnout. I couple this finding with a survey experiment, in which I find that citizens do not punish candidates who buy votes, so long as they can deliver public goods. Because citizens do not punish politicians who disrespect democratic norms, politicians have limited incentive to tie their hands and reduce vote buying.