Erin Baggott - 2023
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Biography
Erin Baggott Carter (赵雅芬) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California and a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is also a non-resident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center. She has previously held fellowships at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.
Dr. Carter's research focuses on Chinese politics and propaganda. Her first book, Propaganda in Autocracies (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press) explores how political institutions determine propaganda strategies with an original dataset of eight million articles in six languages drawn from state-run newspapers in nearly 70 countries. She is currently working on a book on how domestic politics influence US-China relations. Her other work has appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, and International Interactions. Her work has been featured by a number of media platforms, including the New York Times and the Little Red Podcast.
Her research has been supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California, the Weatherhead Center for Inter-national Affairs at Harvard University, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
Dr. Carter's Google Scholar profile is here. She can be reached via email at baggott [at] usc.edu or ebaggott [at] stanford.edu and by Twitter at @baggottcarter.
Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief [PDF]
"As long as people think that the dictator's power is secure," Gordon Tullock wrote, "it is secure." When citizens think otherwise, all at once, a dictator's power is anything but, as Timur Kuran and Susanne Lohmann observed after the Soviet Union's collapse. This conviction -- that power rests ultimately on citizens believing in it -- has long compelled the world's autocrats to invest in sophisticated propaganda apparatuses. This book draws on the first global dataset of autocratic propaganda, encompassing eight million newspaper articles from 70 countries in six languages. We document dramatic variation in propaganda across autocracies: in coverage of the regime and its opponents, in narratives about domestic and international life, in the threats of violence issued to citizens, and in the domestic events that shape it.
Why does propaganda vary so dramatically across autocracies? The answer, put simply, is that different autocrats employ propaganda to achieve different ends. Most autocrats now govern with nominally democratic institutions: regular elections, national parliaments, and opposition parties. Some autocrats are more constrained by these institutions than others, either because their recourse to repression is limited by international pressure or because they confront domestic institutions or pressure groups that bind them. Where these electoral constraints are relatively binding, autocrats must curry some amount of popular support, and so they employ propaganda to persuade citizens of regime merits. To be persuasive, however, propaganda apparatuses must cultivate the appearance of neutrality, which requires conceding bad news and policy failures. Where electoral constraints are binding, we find, propaganda apparatuses cover the regime much like Fox News covers Republicans.
Where autocrats confront no electoral constraints -- where autocrats can fully secure themselves with repression -- propaganda serves not to persuade citizens, but to dominate them. Propaganda derives its power from its absurdity. By forcing citizens to consume content that everyone knows to be false, autocrats make their capacity for repression common knowledge. Propaganda apparatuses engage in absurdly positive pro-regime coverage, while pretending opposition does not exist. Narratives about a country's contemporary history are presented in absurd terms, for these absurdities give them power. Citizens are told that their countries are envied around the world, crime does not exist, ``democracy" is alive and vibrant, and that the dictator is a champion of national sports. Propaganda apparatuses routinely and explicitly threaten citizens with violence.
Students of autocratic politics generally regard nominally democratic institutions as forces for stability and regime survival as secured through patronage and repression. Our approach is different. We view nominally democratic institutions as constraints that autocrats attempt to loosen and citizens' beliefs as the key battlefield on which the struggle for political change is waged. Most broadly, we show that even weak electoral constraints force autocrats to wage the battle for citizens' beliefs from a position of weakness. To persuade citizens of their regimes' merits, electorally constrained autocrats must acknowledge policy failures that risk confirming citizens' frustrations and facilitating collective action. We draw from a range of disciplines to illustrate how. Our theory is informed by field research in China and Central Africa. We use computational tools to collect and measure propaganda, statistical and network techniques to analyze it, and case studies to bring it to life. Many of these case studies are of intrinsic historical importance. We explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda apparatus uses Donald Trump as a propaganda tool, why the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) propaganda is more effusive than any point since the Cultural Revolution, why Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali publicized his regime's failures before becoming the Arab Spring's first casualty, and why Cameroonian President Paul Biya produces different propaganda in English and French.
The table of contents and first chapter appear above. The book is will be published in April 2023 in the Cambridge University Press series on the Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. It is available for preorder now. Changing Each Other: US-China Relations in the Shadow of Domestic Politics [PDF]
China and the United States are not inevitably destined for conflict, but their domestic politics make it more likely, and so both governments seek security by changing the other from within. This book manuscript explains how.
In Part 1, I document how the United States and China use diplomacy to avoid the "Thucydides trap" that, according to some, structurally imperils US-China relations. I analyze original, day-level datasets of US-China interactions and US assessments of China drawn from 100,000 pages of Freedom of Information Act requests. Chinese diplomacy, I find, improves American perceptions of China and increases bilateral cooperation. This suggests that Sino-American conflict is not inevitable, even during moments of mutual suspicion.
In Part 2, I show how domestic politics in China and the US have consistently destabilized the bilateral relationship and made each side less secure. In China, the paramount leader must satisfy elite demands for patronage. When economic downturns threaten his ability to do so, he routinely initiates diversionary conflict with the United States to generate a "rally around the flag" "effect. Some 40% of Chinese-initiated conflict with the United States, I show, is diversionary. In the US, legislators have electoral incentives to support anti-China legislation, which elicits hostility while generally failing to secure meaningful change in Chinese trade policies, military behavior, and domestic repression.
Both governments understand that the other's domestic politics threatens their security, and so, in Part 3, I show how they change the other from within. Using data from the Foreign Agents Registration Act, I show that Chinese lobbying compels lawmakers to support pro-China legislation and makes American media less likely to cast China as an adversary. Using data on broadcast areas for the Voice of America and writings from former Chinese Fulbright scholars, I show that America's cultural outreach efforts have fostered protests and built constituencies for democratic change.
A PDF version of the book precis appears above. Published and/or Forthcoming
When Autocrats Threaten Citizens with Violence: Evidence from China. 2022. With Brett L. Carter. British Journal of Political Science. [PDF] [web]
Questioning More: RT, America, and the Post-West World Order. With Brett L. Carter. Security Studies. 2021. [PDF] [web]
Propaganda and Protest in Autocracies. 2021. With Brett L. Carter. Journal of Conflict Resolution. [PDF] [web]
Focal Moments and Protests in Autocracies: How Pro-Democracy Anniversaries Shape Dissent in China. June 2020. With Brett L. Carter. Journal of Conflict Resolution. [PDF] [web] [Online Appendix]
Diversionary Cheap Talk: Economic Conditions and US Foreign Policy Rhetoric, 1945-2010 International Interactions, January 2020. [PDF] [web]
Propaganda and Electoral Constraints in Autocracies. With Brett L. Carter. Comparative Politics Newsletter, Fall 2018. [PDF]
Under Review
Broadcasting Out-Group Repression to the In-Group: Evidence from China. With Brett Carter. R&R at Journal of Conflict Resolution.
Do Chinese Citizens Conceal Their Opposition to the CCP? Evidence from Two Survey Experiments. With Brett Carter and Stephen Schick. R&R at China Quarterly.
Exporting the Tools of Dictatorship: The Politics of China's Technology Transfers to Africa. With Brett Carter. Circulating as AidData Working Paper 122. The Sparks that Become Prairie Fires: Religion and Preference Falsification in China. With Brett Carter.
How Domestic Politics Yield Nationalist Propaganda and International Conflict in Autocracies. Working Papers
When Beijing Goes to Washington: The Effect of Chinese Government Lobbying on US Politics and Media Coverage.
Getting Ahead in the Chinese Communist Party: The Role of Repression. With Jonghyuk Lee and Victor Shih.
The Kremlin and K Street: Explaining Russian Influence in Washington. With Brett L. Carter.
Explaining Foreign Coverage in the New York Times. With Brett L. Carter and James Fearon.
Other Writing
American Democracy is Still in Danger: How to Protect It From Enemies Foreign and Domestic. With Brett Carter and Larry Diamond. Foreign Affairs, January 6, 2023. [Online]
Tiananmen's Other Children. With Brett Carter. New York Times, June 4, 2020. [English] [中文]
Diversionary Aggression in Chinese Foreign Policy. Brookings Institution, 2019. [Online]
Chinese State-Run Media Favors Clinton Over Trump. Washington Post, 2016. [Online]
Courses
The Political Economy of China (Syllabus)
This course surveys the political economy of China. It begins with China’s political institutions and its economic history from pre-revolutionary times to the present. It then explores China’s rural and urban economies, private sector, local governments, income inequality, social welfare provision, and macroeconomic planning. It next turns to China’s international trade and foreign investment. It concludes with a review of China’s demographic trends and environmental issues. Throughout the course, we will focus on the changing role of state-society relations. To what degree has political reform accompanied economic reform? Is the state increasingly accountable to citizens? Or has China become trapped in a partial reform equilibrium in which elite interests impede further liberalization? An introductory economics course is a helpful, but not required, precursor to this course.
Chinese Foreign Policy (Syllabus)
This advanced undergraduate seminar explores contemporary issues in Chinese foreign policy. It explores how Chinese policymakers pursue their goals: through diplomacy, force, trade, propaganda, and normative appeals to soft power. The course asks students to consider a number of important questions. To what degree can leading international relations theories explain China’s behavior abroad? Given the broad spectrum of Chinese political actors — the paramount leader, political elites, the military, and the public – whose preferences are influential, and when? What role do geographic features, economic interests, and secessionist movements play? Does China have a grand strategy, and if so, what is it? The course presumes familiarity with the basic contours of Chinese history and politics.
Chinese Foreign Policy (Graduate) (Syllabus)
This graduate level seminar reviews the political science literature on the international relations of China. It asks students to apply analytical tools from international relations and comparative politics to China, including approaches that involve systemic theories, identity, ideology, domestic factors, and psychology. In particular, it focuses on how China’s domestic conditions – political and economic, as well as popular and elite – motivate its foreign policy. Methodologically, the course reviews case study, archival, survey, field, and computational approaches to studying China. The course presumes familiarity with basic qualitative and quantitative methods in political science. It aims to prepare students to conduct original research on Asian security issues, international relations, and comparative politics.
China in International Affairs (Syllabus)
China has been interacting with the world for millennia. No course can attempt a meaningful synthesis of that history in one semester. Therefore it is useful to begin with what this course is not. It is not a history course, nor is it a course on China’s domestic politics (though they often influence its international affairs in decisive ways). Instead, this course aims to explain China’s contemporary engagement with the world. To do so, it draws upon historical cases, empirical evidence, and international relations theory. Part I of the course presents students with theoretical tools and historical background on China’s foreign relations. Part II introduces the domestic political institutions that shape China’s engagement with the world. Part III focuses on China’s economic relations with the world. Part IV focuses on China’s political-military relations with major powers and multilateral organizations. The course concludes by asking, does China have a grand strategy in international affairs? If so, what is it, who is responsible for crafting it, and how successful has it been?
Historical Approaches to International Relations (Syllabus)
This course is an introduction to the modern international system. It begins with the early principles of American foreign policy. It examines the origins of World War I and why the Wilsonian moment crumbled into isolationism and depression. It explores the rise of fascism and the sources of World War II. It discusses how the United States and Europe constructed the post-war order. It examines the politics of the Cold War and the atomic age. It reviews the fall of the Berlin Wall and what followed: the unique moment known as the “end of history” characterized by rising living standards and the spread of democracy across the globe. The final part of the course reviews the evidence for the return of history: the “clash of civilizations” thesis, the War on Terror, the politics of autocracy in China and Russia, and institutional decay and anti-globalist backlash in the United States and Europe. The course concludes with a discussion of the far right in comparative perspective and the role of propaganda in contemporary world politics.