Exporting Autocracy: How Foreign Influence Operations Shape Democratic Attitudes

By: Samantha Bradshaw, Carl LeVan and Austin Hart

Abstract: Russia and China increasingly target foreign audiences as part of their efforts to project influence and shape political outcomes abroad. Ordinary citizens experience this–often unknowingly–via changes to their information environment, including online disinformation campaigns, news about economic, military, and diplomatic operations, and longer term efforts to co-opt media outlets. While prior research raises concerns that foreign authoritarian influence (FAI) threatens the resilience of democratic institutions, we consider the impact of Russian and Chinese FAI on democratic attitudes across fifteen Sub-Saharan African countries from 2008 to 2023. We present evidence that chronic exposure to FAI as measured through print media content is associated with declining demand for democratic protections and increasingly negative views of their supply. We see a similar response to short-run shocks in the intensity of Russian, but not Chinese, FAI. These results highlight the importance of differentiating influence by source and of considering impact in both the short and long term. Substantively, the findings advance our understanding of the international drivers of democratic backsliding, with implications for empirically-based foreign policies to defend democracy.

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