Scandals, Media, and Government Responsiveness in China and Kenya

Abstract

Political scientists and policy makers’ conventional wisdom holds that democracies listen to their populations, while authoritarian governments do not. As such, we expect that democratic countries with free media to be responsive to scandal, but do not have the same expectation of authoritarian states. This conventional wisdom, however, does not hold true in many countries. Using case studies of two aberrant cases, China and Kenya, we show how authoritarian China is more responsive to public pressure to clean up scandals than democratic Kenya. Argue that while democracy and free media are important for government responsiveness to scandal, they are not sufficient conditions. Public expectation and a functional judicial system are also necessary.