Sometimes Less Is More: Censorship,News Falsification,and Disapproval in 1989 East Germany

Does more media censorship imply more regime stability? We argue that censorship may cause mass disapproval for censoring regimes. In particular, we expect that censorship backfires when citizens can falsify media content through alternative sources of information. We empirically test our theoretical argument in an autocratic regime—the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Results demonstrate how exposed state censorship on the country's emigration crisis fueled outrage in the weeks before the 1989 revolution. Combining original weekly approval surveys on GDR state television and daily content data of West German news programs with a quasi-experimental research design, we show that recipients disapproved of censorship if they were able to detect misinformation through conflicting reports on Western television. Our findings have important implications for the study of censoring systems in contemporary autocracies, external democracy promotion, and campaigns aimed at undermining trust in traditional journalism.     

Symbolic racism in candidate evaluation: An experiment

The authors explored the symbolic racism construct to determine whether discrimination in the evaluation of political candidates can be attributed to a combination of traditional values and antiblack affect as suggested by Sears. Using an experimental design where candidate race was manipulated in three conditions, they found that differential racial attributions do operate in the evaluation of political candidates. Contrary to expectations, however, no antiblack affect was found to be at work in the evaluation of the black candidate. Findings are discussed in the framework of contemporary assumptions of research on racial reasoning.     

Legal, Political and Practical Aspects of Budgetary Decision-Making in Finland

The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate the strong role of state finance in society. The article discusses the role of finance and economics from the point of view of administrative and political research. For many years, legal science, especially constitutional and administrative law, has been the leading field of research and practice in Finland dealing with government, the state and even society as a whole. Today, economics and finance have taken the leading position in the Scandinavian welfare state ( Sozialstaat ).     

BOOK REVIEW FORUM

William Julius Wilson , 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy