Information Manipulation, Coordination, and Regime Change*

“Examples include bank runs (Garratt and Keister, 2009; Goldstein and Pauzner, 2005); speculative currency attacks (Morris and Shin, 1998); setting of industry standards (Farrell and Saloner, 1985; Farrell and Klemperer, 2007); technology adoption (Katz and Shapiro, 1985, 1986); political revolts (Edmond, 2013; Egorov…”

“The parameter s can be interpreted as the “sentiment” of the public, which captures their perception of what uninformative messages would sound like.8 For example, if 7We abstract from free-riding issues, which have been carefully addressed by Edmond (2011) and Bernhardt and Shadmehr (2011).”

“The common denominator to most of these writings is the implicit assumption that democracy carries value to citizens only to the extent that it enables them to reallocate material resources in a beneficial way (e.g., Acemoglu et al., 2005, Edmond, 2013, Gehlbach et al., 2016, Mayoral and Ray, 2022).”

“Many studies have shown that the regime may be overthrown due to a lack of trust [1, 2], political trust is closely related to the legitimacy of the regime and political stability, and is regarded as an important feature of democracy [3–6], therefore, maintaining political trust has always been one of the primary task…”

“Theoretical models expect the use of censorship and other means of information control during contentious periods (Edmond, 2013; Gehlbach and Sonin, 2014).”

“As a result of censorship, media control and the absence or manipulation of elections, the regime does not know the true sentiments of its citizens (Edmond 2013; Egorov and Sonin 2020; Xu 2021).”

“Second, we model the survival probability of the ruling regime through a global game (Atkeson, 2000; Edmond, 2013; Morris and Shin, 2001).”

“For example, currency crises have been considered in Morris and Shin (1998), Hellwig, Mukherji, and Tsyvinski (2006), and Angeletos, Hellwig, and Pavan (2006, 2007); debt crises have been addressed in Szkup (2018b) and Zabai (2014); political revolts have been treated in Edmond (2013); and business cycles have been de…”

“Uncertainty has been incorporated in a number of ways, including uncertainty over the next state of the game (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2009), over the regime’s capacity for repression (Boix and Svolik, 2011), over the level of anti-government sentiment in society (De Mesquita, 2010), over the payoffs in each state of th…”

“6 Angeletos, Hellwig and Pavan (2006) and Edmond (2013) also explore how decision makers may strategically manipulate information that affects the outcome of a coordination game in the context of the global games literature.”

“(See, for example, Edmond, 2013).”

“Central to this mode of state action is the mobilization of the security and police sector, which can suppress opposition and deter future protests by raising the costs of coordinating collective action [24].”

“While constituents might draw on their personal economic fortunes to assess performance, they also rely on economic statistics produced by the incumbent governments to do so (Edmond 2013; Guriev and Treisman 2019).”

“See, for example, Egorov et al. (2009), Gehlbach and Sonin (2014) or Edmond ( 2013 ), among many others.”

“The same distinction also set this paper apart from the broader literature on policy design in global games (Goldstein and Pauzner, 2005; Angeletos et al., 2006, 2007; Sakovics and Steiner, 2012; Edmond, 2013; Basak and Zhou, 2020).”

“…formal-theoretic models of propaganda almost exclusively focus on propaganda concerning facts, such as a regime ’ s economic performance, popularity, or military capacity (see, for example, Callander and Wilkie 2007; Chen and Xu 2017; Edmond 2013; Gehlbach and Sonin 2014; Huang 2015; Little 2017).”

“Edmond (2013) also studies the obfuscation of states (say by a dictatorial regime).”

“Whereas fi rst-generation global game models such as Little et al. (2015) and Edmond (2013) predict that changes in the cost of protesting always shift the election thresholds e and e (and e U in the case of a unique equilibrium), our results qualify this assessment.”

“…of multi-action coordination games, departing from the binary-action models of protest used in the literature (Chwe 2000; Bueno de Mesquita 2010; Boix and Svolik 2013; Edmond 2013; Casper and Tyson 2014; Chen and Suen 2016; Tyson and Smith 2018; Shadmehr 2019; Barbera and Jackson 2020).”

“A change in the distribution of religious beliefs should therefore lead to a change in a society’s reliance on religious 17For example, revolutions and social movements can be modelled as global games (Angeletos et al., 2006; Edmond, 2013; Little, 2016; Barberà and Jackson, 2017).”

“Others, such as Edmond (2013) and Bueno de Mesquita (2010), have similarly dealt with discrete action global games in large populations, tackling diverse aspects such as the possibility of strategic action by the status quo, or by political vanguards.”

“Several of these models are based on specific instances of regime change: Egorov et al. (2009), Persson and Tabellini (2009), Boix and Svolik (2013), and Edmond (2013).”

“p-dominance is theoretically motivated by the “critical path lemma” of Kajii and Morris (1997), which is applicable to general incomplete information games.(5) On the other hand, the GH-dominance selection result exploits the belief structure that is specific to global games; as a consequence, GH-dominance can be easi…”

“…for one of the two types.7 It follows that at least one 6For instance, in the context of a global game in which a sender can manipulate the noise with which signals are emitted and seeks to prevent a coordinated attack against the sender, Edmond (2013) restricts his attention to monotone responses.”

“For papers that endogenize the probability that protests lead to successful revolutions, see, among others Bueno de Mesquita (2010); Edmund (2011); Ellis and Fender (2011); Kricheli, Livne, and Magaloni (2011); Kuran (1989); Lohmann (1994); Shadmehr and Bernhardt (2011).”

“…assumptions, often portraying the Internet as a “ liberation technology ” inherently capable of strengthening democratic cultures, providing open access to information, and empowering citizens, particularly in contexts with limited freedom of speech (Diamond 2010; Van Gelder 2012; Edmond 2013).”

“1 See Lohmann (1994); Ginkel and Smith (1999); Shadmehr and Bernhardt (2011); Kricheli et al. (2011); Edmond (2013); Casper and Tyson (2014); Hollyer et al. (2015, 2019); Mueller (2024).”

“Since the seminal work of Morris & Shin (1998), their framework has been used to study public protests and revolutions in different institutional settings (see Edmond (2013), Egorov et al. (2009), Boix & Svolik (2013) and Morris & Shadmehr (2018)). The key component in these models is a coordination game with incomple…”

“In this regard, revolutions have been modeled as coordination or stag‑hunt games in De Mesquita (2010), Edmond (2013), Kiss et al. (2017) or Barbera and Jackson (2020), and some models assume that protesters may have information on what others have done (e.g., Barbera & Jackson, 2020; Kiss et al.,…”

“In a more sophisticated sense, dictators can strategically choose an optimal level of censorship and propaganda to mobilize citizens to take a speci fi c action (e.g. Edmond, 2013; Gehlbach and Sonin, 2014).”

“…(2019) study information design with adversarial equilibrium selection in a regime change game. ris and Shin 2004), investment game (Carlsson and van Damme 1993), team work production (Moriya and Yamashita 2020), and policy changes (De Mesquita 2010; Edmond 2013; Chen and Suen 2017), among others.”

“…among political actors to include fringe figures such as moderate terrorists (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita (2005), Lapan and Sandler (1988), Bueno de Mesquita (1997)), and coordination games among willing participants in revolutionary activities (e.g. Kiss, et al. (2017), Chwe (2000), Edmond (2013)).”

“Examples of published papers in top political science journals include Boix and Svolik (2013), Casper and Tyson (2014), Little et al. (2015), Rundlett and Svolik (2016), Shadmehr and Bernhardt (2017), and Tyson and Smith (2018). There are many other working papers or economics publications that use regime change games…”

“Indeed, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube have been extensively exploited by protesters to spread their ideals, to attract potential fellows and to coordinate street mobilisations ( Acemoglu, Hassan & Tahoun, 2014; Edmond, 2013).”

“Pauzner 2005), debt crises (Morris and Shin 2004), and political changes (Edmond 2013). These static regime change games are solvable by iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies for fixed prior beliefs and arbitrarily informative private signal structures (see Morris and Shin 2003). In my model, if no att…”

“In the political regime change context c could be the expected cost of death/punishment, the private payoff the benefit of being part of the future elite (see Edmond [2013]) and q the social benefit (cost) of changing leader.”

“, media (Prat and Strömberg, 2011 or Edmond, 2011), public prosecution (Alt and Lassen, 2010 or Torija 2011), rent extraction (Dreher and Schneider, 2010. or Ferraz and Finan, 2011.)”

“8There has recently been a great deal of effort in applying information design to political environments including Edmond (2013), Cotton & Li (2018), Gratton & Lee (2022), Luo & Rozenas (2022), Innocenti (2022), Heese et al. (2019), and Prato & Turner (2022).”

“For instance, Corsetti et al. (2004) study how a major speculator (e.g., George Soros) can trigger a currency attack that influences smaller speculators, while Edmond (2013) examines a political leader who manipulates information about the regime’s strength, which citizens then rationally discount.”

“Several theoretical models from autocratic politics show that — especially during contentious periods — regimes should leverage hard propaganda to prevent being over-thrown and to signal resolve (Edmond 2013; Svolik 2012).”

“…where professional dissidents may mobilize citizens to revolt against the incumbent regime by altering their beliefs about the regime’s power, whereas (Edmond, 2013) analyzes a regime’s usage of propaganda to manipulation citizens’ beliefs about its strength in order to prevent being overthrown.”

“…and under which circumstances media strengthen dictatorships or contribute to the erosion of authoritarian rule (e.g. Edmond, 2013; Lorentzen, 2014; Rød & Weidmann, 2015).1 Despite an intense exchange on the role of media and information for the stability and…”

“Models of censoring public data (Shadmehr and Bernhardt 2015) are different from models of making public data noisier (Edmond 2013): a regime censors by not reporting bad news, which is not the same as adding noise to the original distribution, as in their formulation.”

“Edmond, C. (2013). Information manipulation, coordination, and regime change.”

“Moreover, the large literature on information manipulation in autocracies has not studied the informational content of the state’s actions about its legitimacy (Egorov et al. 2009; Edmond 2013; Shadmehr and Bernhardt 2015; Barbera and Jackson 2016; Huang et al. 2019).”

“This is the last part of Proposition 3 in Edmond (2013) and is proved in Appendix A.4 to that paper.”

“Meanwhile, collective actions (Waytz, 2012) (Edmond, 2011) can be exploited to manipulate to affect customers choice (e.g. by a mass of sponsored advertising or fraud clicks), if the effect is larger than regular promotion methods such as advertising and price-off.”

“Governments deter political activism and maintain authoritarian control by offering concessions or alternatively signaling their capacity and willingness to repress collective action (Boix and Svolik 2013; Edmond 2013).”

“…1986) and Dewatripont and Maskin (1995) supply the soft budget constraint; Barzel (1974) ), Morris and Shin (1998, 2002, 2003), Hellwig (2002), Angeletos and Werning (2006), and Edmond (2013), with the sociology supplied by Granovetter (1978), Kuran (1989, 1991), Chwe (2001), and Lohmann (1994).”