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Propaganda to persuade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2019

Tinghua Yu Open the ORCID record for Tinghua Yu [Opens in a new window]
Tinghua Yu*
Affiliation:
Government Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. Email: t.yu5@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

I analyze a model in which an incumbent ruler designs a rule for propaganda disclosure that reveals information about her competence to her allies and opponents. A message that increases beliefs about the incumbent's competence is considered as propaganda. I show that for propaganda to be persuasive, it must be limited in frequency. I also demonstrate how various features of the environment affect the frequency of propaganda. Propaganda increases in frequency as the incumbent's allies become more dependent on her and as her opponents become weaker. Further, there is a non-monotonic relationship between the strength of the conflict of interest between both her allies and her opponents and the frequency of propaganda. As conflict increases, the frequency of propaganda decreases up to a threshold beyond which increased conflict is associated with more frequent propaganda.

Keywords

Formal modeling
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 438 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

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