The US has taken a more middle-of-the-road approach, essentially letting private companies decide what they want to do. Daymude and his co-authors wanted to explore these distinctly different approaches. So they developed a computational agent-based simulation that modeled how individuals navigate between wanting to express dissent and fear of punishment. The model also includes how an authority adapts its supervision and policies to minimize dissent at the lowest possible enforcement costs.
“It's not some learning theory thing,” Daymude said. “And it's not rooted in empirical statistics. We didn't go out and ask a thousand people, 'What would you do if you were faced with this situation? Would you have a dissenting opinion or censor yourself?' and then build that data into the model. Ours This model allows us to anchor some assumptions about how we think people behave in general, but then lets us explore parameters. What happens if you are more or less bold? What happens if the penalties are heavier or less severe? Is an authority more or less tolerant? And we can make predictions based on our fundamental assumptions about what will happen.”
Let a hundred flowers bloom
According to their model, the most extreme case is an authoritarian government that employs a draconian punitive strategy, effectively suppressing all dissent among the general population. “Everyone's best strategic choice is to say nothing at this time,” Daymude said. “So why doesn't every authoritarian government on the planet just do this?” That led them to take a closer look at the dynamics. “Maybe authoritarians will start somewhat moderately,” he said. “Maybe the only way they can reach that extreme end point is through small changes over time.”
Daymude points to the Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign of the 1950s as an illustrative example. Here, Chairman Mao Zedong initially encouraged open criticism of his government before abruptly taking aggressive action when dissent spiraled out of control. The model showed that in such a case, dissidents' self-censorship gradually increased, culminating in near-total compliance over time.
But there's a catch. “The opposite of the Hundred Flowers is that this strategy does not work if the population has enough courage,” says Daymude. “The authoritarian power can't find a way to become completely draconian. People continue to stubbornly disagree. So every time it tries to ramp up the severity, it gets caught every time because there are still people who still have differing opinions. They say, 'Catch us if you dare.'”
