State Censorship: A Global Study of Press Freedom in Non-Democratic Regimes.

Non-democratic regimes often do experience some degree of freedom of the press. This paper develops and tests a theory to explain the differences in this respect between non-democratic countries. Starting from Geddes' distinction between military, personalist and single-party regimes, the paper argues that press freedom will be most restricted in personalist regimes because of the political isolation of leaders and ruling cliques. Single-party regimes, being the most transparent and inclusive among non-democratic regimes (Geddes, 1999) will allow the greatest level of press freedom. This however, depends on their level of heterogeneity: in singleparty regimes with little or non-existent opposition, there will be more censorship, the leaders being able to coordinate better; in single-party regimes with much opposition, there is more media freedom. Military regimes are also expected to censor the press based on the fact that their leaders are socialised within a culture o violence and will be capable of censoring the press in order to stay in power. These theoretical expectations are empirically tested using country data from Freedom House and Reporters without Borders, which are analysed in a panel data research design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]