Faced with Information Overload: What Citizen Input Receives Leaders’ Attention in Authoritarian China

Autor(en)

Yue Guan, Christian Göbel

Abstrakt

Authoritarian regimes use participatory institutions to gather information from citizens, but the gathered information is often overwhelming. To examine what receives leaders’ attention amid this overload, we analyzed communications from two Chinese e-government platforms that published local Party and government heads’ written instructions (pishi) in response to individual citizen submissions. After classifying them using supervised machine learning, we found that these leaders placed greater emphasis on policy areas such as malfeasance, welfare, labor, environment, and business. They also focused more on citizen complaints and suggestions than inquiries. These findings highlight the types of input political leaders prioritize in authoritarian regimes.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften

Journal

Problems of Post-Communism

Band

72

Seiten

571

Anzahl der Seiten

582

ISSN

1075-8216

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2025.2490926

Publikationsdatum

05-2025

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

506002 E-Government

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/daf1f491-7173-4fef-b688-389c37e662f3