Scott Radnitz - 28 November 2017 - Political Institutions and Conspiracy Belief: Evidence from Surveys in Georgia and Kazakhstan

A public lecture with Scott Radnitz (University of Washington)AbstractThis talk asks how conspiracy theories operate in partially democratic or non-democratic settings. Elites in these political systems are believed to strategically use conspiracies to distract, confound, and demobilize the public, yet cynical citizens often independently suspect their own leaders of being complicit in conspiracies. Conspiracy theories in weakly institutionalized societies thus highlight a paradox of political trust: Conspiracy belief involves both credulousness (toward the claimant) and suspicion (of the putative villain). This analysis uses original surveys of Georgia and Kazakhstan to understand how people reconcile official conspiracy claims with distrust of the state. Survey experiments test how they weigh official claims or denials against preexisting biases in determining culpability, and whether exposure to official conspiracy claims motivates pro-regime or repressive policy preferences. Th