Abstract: This study examines how independent political information affects beliefs, attitudes, and political engagement in an autocratic context. In partnership with a media NGO in Kazakhstan, I conduct a field experiment in which individuals are randomly assigned to receive independent political information through a fact-checking service. Exposure to the service leads individuals to revise their beliefs about the country’s limited democratic practices and to view protesters more favourably. Individuals also become less supportive of the regime relative to the opposition and are more likely to agree with the need to reduce information control. At the same time, exposure to independent political information decreases overall willingness to engage in political action. This disengagement effect is concentrated among individuals with lower prior support for democratic norms, whereas those who strongly endorse democratic principles remain engaged and are more likely to donate to support independent media. These findings expose the limits of independent political information in encouraging political participation in autocratic contexts.

Abstract: This study examines the disparate economic and social legacies of the Gulag system on modern Russia. A geographic discontinuity created by the settlement restrictions imposed on political ex-prisoners is exploited to exogenously identify areas historically exposed to forced labour. First, the findings reveal that Gulag regions remain more industrialized today, consistent with long-run path dependence. Areas in and around former camps host more firms, which are larger, more labour-intensive, less capital-intensive, and generate higher revenues. Second, these same regions exhibit persistently lower generalized trust. Third, firms behave differently in exactly the way predicted by lower generalized trust: there are systematic differences in contractual relationship breakdown and in the underlying ties between firms themselves. Litigation rates are lower in Gulag regions than in comparator locations for local partnerships, but higher with distant partners, and firms in these regions hold fewer ownership ties to their local partners as well, a pattern consistent with the divergent effects of in-group and out-group systems. Altogether, these patterns suggest that the erosion of trust continues to shape firm behaviour decades after the dissolution of the forced-labour system.