Bogdan G. Popescu | Princeton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Bogdan G. Popescu

Talks by Bogdan G. Popescu

This is the poster which was presented at the University of Nottingham Research Showcase 2011. Th... more This is the poster which was presented at the University of Nottingham Research Showcase 2011. The poster is based on the findings from "State Censorship: A Global Study of Press Freedom in Non-Democratic Regimes".

Perception of another country or power plays an important role in public preferences of foreign p... more Perception of another country or power plays an important role in public preferences of foreign policies. If citizens perceive another power as friendly or even attractive, they are more likely to give consent to policies that will bring their country closer to the power in question. By projecting a more positive image in another society, a country increases its soft power. In this study, we test the hypothesis that the understanding of another country's internal complexities will help brew positive perception of that country. In the Western societies, for example, it was found that citizens with more understanding of the social and cultural complexities of Arabic countries had largely more positive perceptions of them. We test this theory by looking at Chinese people perception of the EU and Europeans with a newly collected dataset from 3,000 citizens living in six major cities in China. We found that, \textit{ceteris paribus}, the knowledge of EU complexities significantly affect Chinese people's perception of EU, as a player in global affairs. People with more knowledge of the EU area show more positive attitudes of Europeans, even if their personal experience of the EU or Europeans might have been negative. The study hence furthers our understanding of political and cultural psychology, and carries important implications for building international trust as well as soft power of political actors.

Non-democratic regimes often do experience some degree of freedom of the press. This paper develo... more 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 single-party 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.

Articles by Bogdan G. Popescu

Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2020

Many scholars point to landholding inequality as a root cause of the "Great Divergence" between r... more Many scholars point to landholding inequality as a root cause of the "Great Divergence" between rich and poor countries over the last few centuries. Large landowners who fear being eclipsed by the masses or rival industrial elites and seek to preserve social and economic rents underinvest in public goods, block rural-urban migration, and keep peasants poor and subservient. By eliminating large landowners and enabling new policy initiatives, extensive land reform holds potential to vastly and directly improve peasant livelihoods, facilitate human capital formation, and enhance economic and social mobility. We demonstrate that this failed to occur in Peru despite a sweeping land reform that redistributed half of all private land to peasants. Using original localized land reform data and a geographic regression discontinuity design that exploits unevenness in reform implementation, we show that greater land reform intensity in Peru generated more poverty and stunted human development. This occurred because land reform encouraged rural demographic stasis, generated widespread land informality and property rights instability, and reduced political competitiveness. Although the government's distortionary management of post-reform cooperatives certainly did not maximize their development potential, evidence suggests that Peru's land reform failed to promote development because of broader inherent features of the reform.

This is the poster which was presented at the University of Nottingham Research Showcase 2011. Th... more This is the poster which was presented at the University of Nottingham Research Showcase 2011. The poster is based on the findings from "State Censorship: A Global Study of Press Freedom in Non-Democratic Regimes".

Perception of another country or power plays an important role in public preferences of foreign p... more Perception of another country or power plays an important role in public preferences of foreign policies. If citizens perceive another power as friendly or even attractive, they are more likely to give consent to policies that will bring their country closer to the power in question. By projecting a more positive image in another society, a country increases its soft power. In this study, we test the hypothesis that the understanding of another country's internal complexities will help brew positive perception of that country. In the Western societies, for example, it was found that citizens with more understanding of the social and cultural complexities of Arabic countries had largely more positive perceptions of them. We test this theory by looking at Chinese people perception of the EU and Europeans with a newly collected dataset from 3,000 citizens living in six major cities in China. We found that, \textit{ceteris paribus}, the knowledge of EU complexities significantly affect Chinese people's perception of EU, as a player in global affairs. People with more knowledge of the EU area show more positive attitudes of Europeans, even if their personal experience of the EU or Europeans might have been negative. The study hence furthers our understanding of political and cultural psychology, and carries important implications for building international trust as well as soft power of political actors.

Non-democratic regimes often do experience some degree of freedom of the press. This paper develo... more 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 single-party 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.

Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2020

Many scholars point to landholding inequality as a root cause of the "Great Divergence" between r... more Many scholars point to landholding inequality as a root cause of the "Great Divergence" between rich and poor countries over the last few centuries. Large landowners who fear being eclipsed by the masses or rival industrial elites and seek to preserve social and economic rents underinvest in public goods, block rural-urban migration, and keep peasants poor and subservient. By eliminating large landowners and enabling new policy initiatives, extensive land reform holds potential to vastly and directly improve peasant livelihoods, facilitate human capital formation, and enhance economic and social mobility. We demonstrate that this failed to occur in Peru despite a sweeping land reform that redistributed half of all private land to peasants. Using original localized land reform data and a geographic regression discontinuity design that exploits unevenness in reform implementation, we show that greater land reform intensity in Peru generated more poverty and stunted human development. This occurred because land reform encouraged rural demographic stasis, generated widespread land informality and property rights instability, and reduced political competitiveness. Although the government's distortionary management of post-reform cooperatives certainly did not maximize their development potential, evidence suggests that Peru's land reform failed to promote development because of broader inherent features of the reform.