Sources of Popular Support for Authoritarian Regimes

All authoritarian governments attempt to control the flow of news and information to the public-but with what effect? To answer this question, we adapt an existing model of opinion formation to conditions in authoritarian countries, validate that model on opinion data collected in Brazil during its authoritarian period, and, finally, use the model to derive expectatipns about patterns of regime support that exist in different kinds of authoritarian systems. The paper shows that support for regime policies depends heavily on citizens' level of political awareness. In general, highly aware persons are more heavily exposed to governmentdominated communications media, but are also better able to resist the propaganda they encounter. As a result, people in the broad middle ranges of awareness-who pay enough attention to be exposed but are not sophisticated enough to resist-typically are most susceptible to government influence. All authoritarian governments attempt to manage the flow of news and political information to the public. They seek, on one side, to fill the mass media with a steady stream of progovernment messages and, on the other, to stifle independent criticism and analysis. By these means authoritarian governments attempt to shape the political attitudes of their citizens. Since these governments rarely permit the conduct of independent survey research, no one really knows how successfully they indoctrinate their citizens. Can people who have been fed a steady diet of governmentcontrolled information maintain critical attitudes toward their government? What kinds of citizens are most susceptible to government influence, and what kinds are least susₑptible? What theories can account for the observed patterns of susceptibility? Using opinion data collected in Brazil at the height of its authoritarian period, we develop answers to these questions. We find that support for the government's authoritarian policies tends to be greatest among citizens who *We gratefully acknowledge many helpful comments on the paper by Chris Achen, Larry Bartels, Henry Brady, David Collier, Amaury de Souza, and several anonymous reviewers. We especially thank Herbert McClosky, whose insights on the learning of political attitudes this paper seeks to extend. The research was supported in part by an Academic Senate grant at UCLA. The data reported in this paper were originally collected under a grant from the Ford Foundation and were made available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. We alone bear responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation the paper may contain.