Authoritarian Surveillance and Public Support for Digital Governance Solutions

What factors determine support for digital governance solutions? And do autocracies differ from democracies in the way the population evaluates digitization initiatives by the state? Building on previous studies, we hypothesize that gaps in the quality of public services and information asymmetry between the government and the population increase support, while exposure to information about the potential abuse of such tools by the state reduces support. We conducted a survey experiment with 2462 respondents in Russia and complemented it with four survey experiments of 1000 respondents each in Germany, Turkey, the United States and Estonia. We find strong and consistent evidence that knowledge about the potential misuse of digital governance solutions reduces support, irrespective of the type of political regime. Citizens who mostly rely on government-controlled information are more likely to support the introduction of digital governance tools. Contrary to previous studies, we do not find that gaps in the quality of public services increase support. Instead, respondents who are satisfied with the services provided by the state also seem to trust the government with introducing a digital governance solution.