BOOK PROJECT

Suggestion, Censorship, and Correction: Data Transparency and Public Knowledge in Autocracies

Many authoritarian regimes are implementing open data initiatives to support growth. However, conventional political science literature notes that the liberalization of information and data transparency can destabilize authoritarian regimes. What strategies, then, do these regimes employ to regulate sensitive information when increased data transparency is necessary? I argue that authoritarian regimes differentiate between sensitive political issues that are malleable, and that are intractable. I further contend that authoritarian regimes preemptively employ a strategy of suggestion to shape public interpretation of useful issues, and utilize censorship to prevent public discussion of threatening issues. Moreover, if sensitive information is unexpectedly exposed, authoritarian regimes also retroactively utilize narrative-correction to shape public perception and prevent further circulation of these information.

I test my theory on Malaysia and Singapore, two upper-income electoral authoritarian regimes that have embraced open data initiatives to foster economic transformation. In my main empirical chapter, I leverage a novel dataset of 45000 Parliamentary Questions to show that relative to other topics, Malaysia’s regime provides more data on malleable topics (evidence of suggestion) and less data on intractable topics (evidence of censorship). I also show that the regime continues to employ these information control strategies even after Malaysia’s electoral turnover in 2018. In other chapters, I exploit a vignette survey experiment to show that Malaysia’s regime is able to limit the online circulation of sensitive information produced by civil society actors through discrediting the methodology of independent reports. Finally, I compare Malaysia and Singapore through a most-similar case design to show how authoritarian regimes at different stages of post-industrialization face similar challenges and utilize many of the same strategies to regulate information. Throughout my book project, I supplement my quantitative analyses with interview data collected from eight months of fieldwork in Malaysia and Singapore. The existing literature on authoritarian control has mostly focused on the control of verbal, written, and visual informational-messages. I contribute to this literature by examining the control of data as a form of information. I also identify novel strategies of control specific to the regulation of data. In addition, while most scholarship on the political impacts of digital economy growth has focused on OECD countries, I extend this scholarship to advanced authoritarian regimes.

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

Neo, H.Y. (2025). Education, Control, and the Knowledge Economy in Southeast Asia’s Hybrid Regimes. Pacific Affairs, 98 (1), 29–52. https://doi.org/10.5509/2025981-art2

Suggestion and Censorship: Regulating Public Perception and Public Knowledge of Data in Authoritarian Regimes (under review). Draft available upon request.

Penalizing Personal Politicians: Experimental Evidence on Social Embeddedness and Voter Behavior in Indonesia (with Harry Dienes, Burhan Muhtadi, and Eitan Paul). (under review). Draft available upon request.

WORKS-IN-PROGRESS

Candidates, Coalitions, and Voter Preferences in Ideologically Inconsistent Environments: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in Indonesia (with Harry Dienes, Afrimadona, and Eitan Paul)

Narrative-Correction to Limit Information Dissemination: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Malaysia (data collected)