A free and independent press monitors government actions, broadcasts public grievances, and facilitates debate and dissent among citizens. Because of this, some executives run interference—censoring newspapers, harassing journalists, and shutting down media outlets—whereas other executives do not. What explains this variation? We argue that executives decide to repress or to respect the press based on the sanctions they anticipate from two important constituencies: courts and citizens. We expect that attacks are less likely when courts can make adverse rulings and when citizens can vote leaders out of office. In addition, we suggest that these constraints can function as substitutes; we anticipate the reductive effect of judicial independence wanes as the level of electoral democracy rises, making courts vital to protecting journalists in less democratic systems. We evaluate these expectations using panel data on executive branch attacks on the press in 175 countries, from 1949 to 2016, and find strong support.

The media's ability to freely gather and disseminate information remains a critical aspect of democracy. Studies link media freedom to other concepts including human rights, corruption, democratic peace and conflict, natural resource wealth, political knowledge and foreign aid. However, media freedom's many facets make it difficult for any single index to fully capture. To develop a more robust measure, this article treats media freedom as a latent variable and analyzes ten extant indicators by fitting an item response theory model. Utilizing a Bayesian approach, the model generates time-series, cross-sectional data on a bounded, unidimensional scale from 0 to 1 that measures media freedom in 197 countries from 1948 to 2017. After numerous validity checks, the authors utilize their new Media System Freedom data to replicate Egorov, Guriev and Sonin's (2009) analysis of media freedom and natural resource wealth. The findings indicate that the published results do not hold once the more robust measure is included.

Previous research finds that journalist killings are more likely to occur in democracies rather than non-democracies. While these results provide an important first step in exploring regime type’s effect on journalist’s safety, they assume no variation in how long countries have remained a regime type. In this paper, I argue that as a country’s regime type endures, the likelihood of seeing journalists killed for their work will decrease. My theory also examines the process in different regime types and argues that this effect should hold for autocracies and anocracies, but not democracies|though democratic consolidation should decrease journalist killings there. Using an original sample of journalists killed for their professional work in countries worldwide from 1992 to 2014, I evaluate my theory using regression and survival analyses and find evidence that as regime types endure, journalist killings decrease, on average. As expected, the result holds for autocracies and anocracies but not democracies. However, the data show democratic consolidation does decrease journalist killings. The results provide a broader understanding of the working dynamics between regime type and journalists’ safety in a country’s media system.

Telephone town halls are an increasingly prevalent method for members of Congress (MCs) to communicate with constituents, even while garnering popular criticism for failing to facilitate engagement and accountability. Yet scholars have paid little attention to the events and their effects, and even less to how they might be improved. To remedy this problem, we report on a field experiment in which four MCs joined their constituents in telephone town halls. Overall, participation in an event improved constituents' evaluations of the format in general, and of the MC in particular. Furthermore, we studied how these events might be improved by evaluating a reform-a single-topic focus with predistributed briefing materials-designed to enhance deliberative interaction. This reform enhanced effects on opinions of the format without significantly altering effects on attitudes toward the MC. Our results suggest that telephone town halls hold promise for constituents, officeholders, and democratic practice.

Sovereign creditworthiness is as much a function of politics as economic fundamentals. Previous research has focused on the relationship between creditworthiness and political factors such as regime type, regional effects, and international organization membership. These factors, while important, often change slowly and do not always capture the more dynamic political determinants of creditworthiness. As an alternative, this study focuses on the role of leaders. We argue that leaders' tenure reduces uncertainty in the sovereign credit market. Time in power allows leaders to better manage expectations related to sovereign credit policy of both domestic supporters and market actors. As a result, we expect that creditworthiness improves as a leader's tenure increases. We find supporting evidence for our argument using two distinct empirical approaches: panel data analysis and a natural experiment. Our findings provide a better understanding of the relationship between leaders, politics, and sovereign credit.

Objective. In the following analysis, we investigate the determinants of government efforts to censor media. We develop and test a new theory that argues executive‐level corruption influences when governments are more likely to attempt media censorship. After modeling the media–government dynamic in game form, we utilize the new Varieties of Democracy (V‐Dem) dataset to empirically test this relationship on both traditional media (print and broadcast) and new media (Internet). Using panel, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a lagged dependent variable and country fixed effects, we examine the relationship from 1960 to 2015 for traditional media and from 1993 to 2015 for new media. The results suggest that as governments become more corrupt, governmental efforts to censor both forms of media are likely to increase. We further examine the relationship among different world regions and regime types; we find overall confirmation of our hypothesis.