Autocratic Audiences and Linguistic Complexity

Abstract Making policy speeches is a major activity of authoritarian elites, yet we know surprisingly little about their incentives to be understood by constituents, and whether more effective communicators are rewarded. While many authoritarian actors care little about their audience and speak tediously, we argue that, in the service of legitimation and co-optation, simpler, more effective communication is required in protest-prone regions with lower regime support. Because such regions often have more developed economies and educated populations, paradoxically, this results in the opposite dynamics to that under democracy, where simpler speech is addressed at less educated, poorer constituents. Drawing on data from Russian governors’ major policy addresses and social media posts, and supplementing it with federal parliamentary speeches, we find that the linguistic complexity of elites reflects their audiences; elites also reduce it when their strategic context changes. In turn, more effective communicators are promoted. Our findings contribute to an understanding of authoritarian co-optation, elite incentives, responsiveness, and propaganda.