The Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan seldom appears in Western media outlets. The exception was coverage of the pro-democracy protests of 2022 when the authoritarian government suppressed mass mobilization and enforced order. According to a University of Toronto researcher, the authoritarian political system in Kazakhstan is unlike to change quickly, or soon.
“Based on my research, authoritarianism persists even in cases where people have access to truthful information,” said Dina O’Brien. “The barriers to taking action are still very high, and not everyone shows sufficient support for democracy to try to change the system. So unfortunately, it persists, in part because people allow it to.”
O’Brien, a PhD candidate with the Department of Economics embarked on an innovative field experiment examining current attitudes toward democracy, the role of protestors, and how citizens update their beliefs when provided with fact-based news. That news came from an independent news media outlet via a messaging platform after citizens experienced prolonged exposure to government propaganda.
O’Brien partnered with MediaNet International Centre for Journalism, a Non-Governmental Organization founded by journalists in Kazakhstan. Field experiments are relatively rare among graduate student-led projects in economics.
“I’ve always been interested in fieldwork. Experiments give you more control over measured variables and allow for more credible estimates, but there are significant barriers,” O’Brien explained. “Running experiments is very expensive and time consuming. I started with a different version of the project three years ago, and reaching this stage required some trial and error. Having a reliable partner like MediaNet made the project more relevant to real-world contexts and ultimately stronger.”
MediaNet was not O’Brien’s only partner in completing the project. She was able to access funding from the Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics at the University of Chicago and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) a global organization whose mission is to ensure poverty alleviation policies are informed by scientific evidence generated through randomized controlled trials or RCTs, like O’Brien’s field experiment.
The results of O’Brien’s RCT were mixed when it comes to understanding the political present and future of Kazakhstan.
“What I found was that people who received independent media updates did change their beliefs,” O’Brien said. “They became more aware of the limitations of democracy in Kazakhstan and were more supportive of protesters, but interestingly, they disengaged from the state, and they were less likely to interact with government institutions. The information only had the expected impact, greater engagement, for those who already showed support for democratic institutions. That helps explain why authoritarian regimes can remain durable. Even when people receive truthful information, it can lead to disillusionment.”
The undergraduates O’Brien has taught as both a teaching assistant and course instructor, who normally would not be exposed to the nature of field research, have benefitted both from her research and the partnerships she has created. This is especially true for students enrolled in ECO372, Data Analysis and Applied Econometrics in Practice.
“J-PAL has excellent materials on how to run experiments and what to consider,” O’Brien said. “I gave an introductory lecture using those resources and, in ECO372, I dedicated part of a class to field experiments. It’s not part of the standard curriculum, but I wanted students to know how randomized control trials are conducted to answer causal questions. They found it interesting and relatable.”
While O’Brien’s field work is unique among graduate students of economics, it has had the support of faculty who focus on this kind of research at the Department of Economics, often through affiliation with the Forward Society Lab (FOS). Professors Gustavo Bobonis and Ceren Baysan, O’Brien’s co-supervisors, are two examples of researchers working at the intersection of political economy and development economics with RCTs. Access to their expertise means O’Brien has been challenged as a researcher at every stage of her PhD journey.
“Dina is a sophisticated scholar, who is developing a broad research agenda in the political economy of autocratic regimes,” said Professor Bobonis. “She brings a unique combination of attributes: deep local understanding, connections in the field, entrepreneurial fieldwork skills, and the ability to discipline her empirical work with simple, yet informative, theoretical models.”
Return to the Department of Economics website.
Scroll more news.