Open Networks, Closed Regimes

The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule

Shanthi Kalathil, Taylor C. Boas

• Publisher: Carnegie Endowment For International Peace
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780870033315
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Aspectos sociales en las ciencias de la computación

As the Internet diffuses across the globe, many have come to believe that the technology poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Grounded in the Internet's early libertarian culture and predicated on anecdotes pulled from diverse political climates, this conventional wisdom has informed the views of policymakers, business leaders, and media pundits alike. Yet few studies have sought to systematically analyze the exact ways in which Internet use may lay the basis for political change. In O pen Networks, Closed Regimes, the authors take a comprehensive look at how a broad range of societal and political actors in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries employ the Internet. Based on methodical assessment of evidence from these cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—the study contends that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.

CHAPTER ONE

The Conventional Wisdom: What Lies Beneath?

Technology will make it increasingly difficult for the state to control the information its people receive…. The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.

—Ronald Reagan, speech at London’s Guildhall, June 14, 1989

The world has changed a great deal since Ronald Reagan spoke these words in 1989. To many, subsequent events have borne witness to the truth of his prediction: authoritarian regimes have fallen around the world, while the power of the microchip has risen. The connection between these two phenomena has taken on a powerful, implicit veracity, even when it has not been explicitly detailed.

A link between technological advance and democratization remains a powerful assumption in popular thinking, even amid a decline in the general “information age” optimism that characterized much of the 1990s. Specifically, there is now a widespread belief in the policy world that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Political leaders often espouse this notion: President George W. Bush has asserted that the Internet will bring freedom to China, while Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that “the rise of democracy and the power of the information revolution combine to leverage each other.”1 President Bill Clinton was also a prolific proponent of the idea that the Internet is inherently a force for democracy.2 Business leaders and media commentators generally concur: former Citicorp chair Walter Wriston has argued in Foreign Affairs that “the virus of freedom … is spread by electronic networks to the four corners of the earth,” and journalist Robert Wright claims that “in all probability, resistance to the Internet’s political logic will plainly be futile within a decade or two.”3

This conventional wisdom on the Internet and democracy has deeper roots than the ebullient pronouncements of recent politicians and pundits. In part, it draws upon the strong libertarian culture that prevailed among the Internet’s early users—a sentiment epitomized by cyberguru John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”4 In this statement, delivered at the World Economic Forum in 1996, he declared “the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies [governments] seek to impose on us.”5 A faith in technology’s potential to challenge authoritarian rule also emerged out of a particular reading of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, where the Soviet Union’s inability to control the flow of electronic information was seen as crucial to its demise. Ronald Reagan’s 1989 statement was typical of early sentiments about the democratizing potential of computer-based communications. As the diffusion of the Internet increasingly facilitates the globalization of communication, culture, and capital, there is a clear desire among the proponents of the process that all good things (including democracy) should go together.

As is often the case with conventional wisdom, this view has several problems. First, it often imputes a political character to the Internet itself, rather than focusing on specific uses of the technology. The Internet, however, is only a set of connections between computers (or a set of protocols allowing computers to exchange information); it can have no impact apart from its use by human beings. The conventional wisdom also tends to be based on a series of “black-box” assertions that obscure the ways in which the use of technology might truly produce a political outcome. Proponents see the Internet as leading to the downfall of authoritarian regimes, but the mechanisms through which this might occur are rarely specified. Instead, popular assumptions often rest on anecdotal evidence, drawing primarily on isolated examples of Internet-facilitated political protest. Subsequent assertions about the technology’s political effects are usually made without consideration of the full national context in which the Internet operates in any given country. Hence, they fail to weigh politically challenging uses of the Internet against others that might reinforce authoritarian rule. Last, the conventional wisdom assumes a relatively static Internet whose early control-frustrating characteristics are replicated as it diffuses around the world.

In this study we seek to critically examine the impact of the Internet in authoritarian regimes, adopting an approach that avoids the pitfalls of the conventional wisdom. First and foremost, we aim to break down and analyze Internet use, taking a comprehensive look at how the Internet is employed by a broad range of political, economic, and social actors. So as not to contribute to the rash of black-box explanations, we examine the causal mechanisms that might connect these forms of Internet use with political impact. We also situate the potential effects of Internet use in their full national context, repeating this process for a diverse sample of authoritarian regimes. Such an approach avoids the problem of making inappropriate generalizations from isolated pieces of anecdotal evidence. Finally, we acknowledge that the Internet is not inherently free from government control, especially in those countries where governments have been in charge of its development since the beginning. As Lawrence Lessig has convincingly argued, governments (democratic and authoritarian alike) can most certainly regulate the Internet, both by controlling its underlying code and by shaping the legal environment in which it operates.6

Based on a systematic examination of evidence from eight cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—we argue that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes. Certain types of Internet use do indeed pose political challenges to authoritarian governments, and such use may contribute to political change in the future. Still, other uses of the Internet reinforce authoritarian rule, and many authoritarian regimes are proactively promoting the development of an Internet that serves state-defined interests rather than challenging them. We do not seek to prove definitively that the Internet will not help to undermine authoritarian regimes, nor do we argue that the medium is merely a tool of repressive governments. Rather, we set forth a framework that allows for methodical thinking about limited evidence, and we consider what this evidence suggests in the short to medium term. As the Internet develops further in authoritarian regimes and more evidence accumulates in the future, we hope this framework will prove useful in assessing more long-term political impacts.

Existing Studies

Despite the prevalence of popular punditry on the Internet’s democratizing effects, little attention has been paid to the issue in academia. Most of the scholarly literature on democratization does not explore the role of the Internet or even the information and communication technologies (ICTs) that predate it. Modernization theorists of the 1950s and 1960s considered the role of the mass media in promoting political and economic development, but the media and ICTs have generally received much less attention in more recent works.7 Several democratization scholars have given brief mentions to the influence of ICTs on authoritarian rule, mostly in reference to the role of television in the “demonstration effect” in Eastern European transitions.8 A few studies (mostly region-specific) have addressed more centrally the question of the media and democracy or democratization.9 Few studies of democratization, however, have considered the potential role of the Internet and related technologies. As Daniel Lynch has argued, “On the question of telecommunications, the silence of the transitions literature is deafening.”10

A growing literature has begun to examine the role of the Internet in the politics of advanced industrial democracies. Many of these studies have examined such issues as Internet use in party competition, the potential for online voting and “direct democracy,” and the use of the Internet for political activism.11 Another set of arguments revolves around the question of online social capital, whether virtual communities contribute to civic engagement in a manner that invigorates and strengthens democracy, or whether they promote social fragmentation and weaken associational life.12 A number of scholars have also weighed in on the new policy issues and political debates surrounding such issues as online privacy, intellectual property, electronic commerce, Internet taxation, and competition policy.13 Each of these strains of literature explores issues that are increasingly important to the politics of advanced industrial democracies. As Internet use becomes more common in the new democracies of the developing world, these questions will matter there as well. Yet the ideas advanced in this literature are much less relevant to the political dynamics of authoritarian regimes.

A few large-scale comparative works have begun to plug holes in the scholarly literature by examining the issue of the Internet in authoritarian regimes. Several of these involve the statistical analysis of democracy and Internet diffusion, but none has produced convincing evidence of a causal relation between these two factors.14 Moreover, consistent and reliable data for such studies are hard to come by. A few important works engage in comparative case studies of the Internet across a variety of developing countries, including many authoritarian regimes.15 Such studies are invaluable for examining the determinants (political or otherwise) of Internet diffusion in the developing world, but they pay less attention to the question of the political impact of Internet use. Several cross-national surveys by Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Reporters sans Frontières have examined restrictions on the Internet in authoritarian regimes, but these likewise engage in little comparative analysis of the medium’s political impact.16

Finally, a number of individual case studies and news reports have examined Internet use in authoritarian regimes around the world. The best of these are balanced and well-informed studies, providing an essential foundation for the comparative work that we have undertaken in this book.17 Many more, however, are impressionistic and anecdotal, falling prey to the pitfalls of the conventional wisdom.

In presenting a systematic, cross-regional comparative study of the impact of Internet use in authoritarian regimes, we seek to fill the gaps in the existing literature. While this is not an academic study per se, we seek to contribute to scholarly debates as well as to policy discourse on the Internet in authoritarian regimes.

The Framework of This Study

This study’s framework for analysis provides a blueprint for examining a comprehensive range of Internet uses, specifying the ways in which those uses might produce political impact and situating such impacts within the full national context of each country. Within each case study, Internet use is divided into categories, but we do not interweave evidence from a number of cases in a general discussion of, for instance, the impact of ecommerce. Such an approach ensures that isolated examples of particular types of Internet use are not taken out of context, and it allows each case to stand on its own in addition to supporting the study’s general argument.

While focusing on the use of the Internet, we consider state Internet policy as an important factor influencing Internet use. Obviously the role of the state is extensive in authoritarian regimes, and in many cases this is particularly true with respect to the media and ICTs. In such countries early experimentation with the Internet usually occurs in the scientific or academic sector, but the central government is generally the major player in any Internet development beyond the experimental level. Like their counterparts in advanced industrial democracies, many authoritarian governments have instituted ICT development plans, created special Internet governance committees, or reorganized bureaucracies to deal most effectively with the Internet. Furthermore, state Internet policies and governance structures are often outgrowths of older regulatory regimes for the mass media and traditional telecommunications, and a consideration of these historical roots is often valuable in understanding current Internet policy. As in any country (and especially where the role of the state is stronger), state policy will have an important influence on the myriad ways in which the Internet is actually used.18

Furthermore, in assessing the political impact of the Internet in any country, one must consider the full national context in which that impact occurs. For this reason, we survey the basic political, economic, and social dynamics of each country, considering such factors as the strength of the authoritarian regime; the major roots of its stability; the nature of the economy and the state’s role in economic growth; the presence and strength of political opposition forces; the demographic characteristics of the population; and the importance of foreign relations and geopolitical concerns in domestic politics. Only with such contextual factors in mind can one proceed to analyze the actual political impact of Internet use in each case.

To gain a broad and balanced picture of the Internet’s impact in each country, we examine Internet use in four comprehensive categories: civil society, politics and the state, the economy, and the international sphere. In each of the categories, one should presume no particular impact on authoritarian rule; a combination of both challenging and reinforcing uses of the Internet likely exists, though the balance may well tilt in one direction or another.

Civil Society

Internet use in the sphere of civil society includes use by the public and by civil society organizations (CSOs). Although the Internet is far from being a mass medium in many of the cases we examine, analyzing the impact of public Internet use (and how that impact may evolve with increased access) is still an important task. Here we consider, for example, whether public access to information on the Internet contributes in any way to a gradual liberalization of the public sphere.19 Alternatively, the government may channel computer networking through such closed systems as national intranets, allowing for much greater state control over content. Even with unrestrained access to the Internet, users’ choices of the information they consume (for instance, entertainment versus international news) will largely determine whether the mass public’s Internet use has any political impact. Where relevant, we also consider public participation in online chat rooms, looking at whether such discourse is liberal and civic, nationalist and jingoistic, critical or supportive of the regime, or some combination of these characteristics.

In examining Internet use by CSOs, we adopt a loose definition of the term “civil society,” looking generally at organizations in the public sphere that operate at least semi-autonomously of the state. This does not mean that they are entirely free from state influence in their activities or the positions they take on public policy issues. Nor should one assume the presence of a vibrant civil society in the country in question; in many of our cases precisely the opposite is true. We do examine the Internet use of prominent organizations in society, considering how they employ the medium to coordinate activities, network with other CSOs, and communicate with the domestic and international public. One should note that CSOs may support the regime as well as oppose it, or that they may take an essentially neutral political stance. Furthermore, Internet use may not actually make a difference in the political impact of CSOs. We also include in this category Internet use by political dissidents, both in groups and as individuals.

Politics and the State

In this category we examine Internet use by political parties (where relevant) and by the government. In most of our cases, legal opposition parties do not exist. Where they do, we consider the use of web sites for communication with voters, as well as web and e-mail use for logistic coordination by party activists. Much more common are state uses of the Internet, which can be divided into two main categories: e-government and propaganda. In many cases, e-government measures are likely to work to the benefit of the regime since they increase the state’s capacity to provide citizen services effectively, thus increasing public satisfaction with the government. E-government may also increase transparency, which can expose corruption; this could cause a crisis of legitimacy for the regime (especially if corruption is widespread), but it might also bolster the regime’s legitimacy if an honest central government is seen to be rooting out endemic corruption. State uses of the Internet for propaganda may be directed primarily at a national or international audience; both are likely to work to the benefit of the regime.

The Economy

In the economic sphere, we consider Internet use by domestic entrepreneurs, state promotion of Internet-driven economic development, and the issue of foreign investment in the Internet industry. The Internet may present significant opportunities for entrepreneurship in a developing economy, possibly leading to the invigoration of an independent private sector or the emergence of a new domestic business elite. Where that is the case, the political preferences and political influence of this group of entrepreneurs may...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms
• CHAPTER ONE: The Conventional Wisdom: What Lies Beneath?
• CHAPTER TWO: Wired for Modernization in China
• CHAPTER THREE: Channeling a “Limited” Resource in Cuba
• CHAPTER FOUR: Catching Up and Cracking Down in Singapore, Vietnam, and Burma
• CHAPTER FIVE: Technology and Tradition in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt
• CHAPTER SIX: Beyond Blind Optimism
• Notes
• Glossary
• Works Cited
• Index
• About the Authors
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace