Assistant Professor Hanno Hilbig publishes on autocratic responsiveness to citizen petitions in Comparative Political Studies

Assistant Professor Hanno Hilbig has published "Do Autocrats Respond to Citizen Demands? Petitions and Housing Construction in the GDR" in Comparative Political Studies with Hans Lueders and Sascha Riaz. Using a novel panel of housing-related petitions to the East German government and a difference-in-differences design, the paper shows that construction was targeted at regions with higher petitioning rates. The findings demonstrate that citizen demands can yield tangible improvements in authoritarian regimes, contributing to scholarship on non-democratic responsiveness. https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140251342919