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The authors are grateful to Daron Acemoglu, James Alt, Philippe Aghion, Yevgenia Albats, Simon Commander, Alexandre Debs, Ruben Enikolopov, Guido Friebel, Michael Hiscox, Torben Iversen, Maria Petrova, James Robinson, Kenneth Shepsle, Andrei Shleifer, Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Luigi Zingales, the co-editors of the APSR, three anonymous referees, and seminar and conference participants at Berkeley, Bilkent, Brunel, Georgia State, Global Institute, Harvard, HSE, ISNIE, MPSA, NBER Political Economics Student Conference, NES, and GSB Stanford.
We need full and truthful information. And the truth should not depend upon whom it has to serve. We can accept only the division between the unofficial information (for the Comintern Executive only) and official information (for everybody).
--Vladimir Lenin, (1921)
Free media are an anathema for any dictator. Still, there is substantial variation in the degree of the media freedom even controlling for the level of democracy. Why would some nondemocratic regimes allow free or partially free media? What are the circumstances under which it might be beneficial to a dictator to allow some degree of media freedom? A possible answer is suggested by a situation we might call "Gorbachev's dilemma."1 In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the new leader of the Soviet Union, faced an array of problems. A surge in the budget deficit following a sharp drop in oil prices was the latest sign that the command economy, which had already underperformed relative to the West for more than a decade, required significant restructuring. Without allowing a certain amount of media freedom, reforms of the highly inefficient bureaucratic system seemed all but impossible. In a small meeting with leading Soviet intellectuals, Gorbachev acknowledged: "The restructuring is progressing with great difficulty. We have no opposition party. How then can we control ourselves? Only through criticism and self-criticism. Most important: through glasnost ."2 However, free flow of information could undermine the very foundations of the Communist Party's dictatorship. In the very same meeting, Gorbachev warned that "Democratism without glasnost does not exist. At the same time, democracy without limits is anarchy. That's why it will be difficult."
Gorbachev's dilemma was by no means unique: every nondemocratic regime has to provide an incentive system for low-tier officials, and most such regimes fear the free flow of information...