Experimentally Estimating Safety in Numbers in a Single-Party Legislature

Abstract

This article builds on recent experimental work in the Vietnamese National Assembly to explore a critical qualification regarding responsiveness in authoritarian parliaments: delegates grow increasingly responsive as the number of peers possessing the same information rises. We suggest that this reinforcement, or safety-in-numbers, effect arises because speaking in authoritarian assemblies is an intrinsically dangerous task, and delegates are reluctant to do so without confidence in the information they would present. Here we describe the saturation design for the original experiment, theorize safety-in-numbers behavior among authoritarian legislators, and test an additional observable implication of the logic. Consistent with the safety-in-numbers logic, we find that the effects of reinforcement are greater in televised floor speeches than closed-door caucuses.