Reading 1: How the internet can reinforce Authoritarian Regimes: the case of north Korea
Approaching the Internet through the framework of authoritarian resilience reveals insights that a focus on the Internet as a democratizing tool may miss. It highlights that the business of ICT can be a co-optive tool. Even in North Korea, a place with extraordinarily low Internet connectivity, the government is attempting to harness the potential of ICTs to make money for the government and to tie the futures of educated elites to the perpetuation of the political system. The North Korean government can act as a gatekeeper for an extremely scarce resource. In terms of repression, while North Korea has essentially blocked access to the Internet, it is likely to spread more in the future. This expansion means that it will be able to serve other repressive functions. Finally, mirroring the offline sphere, North Korea saturates its online sphere with legitimating messages and blocks potentially threatening alternatives. Inserting pro-regime perspectives into the domestic online public sphere restricts the ability for alternative perspectives to gain wide traction online. Ultimately, this analysis suggests that there is no single policy that democratic states can pursue to change how autocracies will harness the Internet. Autocracies are adaptable and will respond to changes in the technological landscape. Perhaps the most reasonable policy recommendation is for democratic states to lead by example in terms of cultivating an open, equitable, and non-repressive online public sphere.
Reading 2: Empowering activist or autocrats? The internet in authoritarian regimes
While previous research has established that expansion of the Internet is more likely to be implemented in democracies (Milner, 2006), this should not lead us to assume that the Internet fosters democratization. Rather, we will have to take a closer look at how non-democratic countries expand Internet coverage, under which conditions this occurs, and what effects it produces. We build on two prevalent and opposing beliefs about the implementation of the Internet in autocracies and its effects: the notions of ‘liberation technology’ and ‘repression technology’. The former expects that the Internet will empower activists and democracy promoters, while the latter proposes that the new technology will serve to strengthen autocratic rule. We put these arguments to the test by looking at the empirical patterns of Internet implementation, expansion, and effect on regime change. Our first finding is that governments that are more concerned about controlling the domestic information environment have higher Internet expansion rates. The result directly contradicts the ‘liberation technology’ argument, because one would expect that such regimes would be deterred from implementing a technology that enables free information flow. From a ‘repression technology’ perspective, on the other hand, the finding is more intuitive. If the Internet can be used as a tool to solidify autocratic survival by shaping public opinion as well as to identify dissenters, then more repressive regimes should be the most interested in providing online connection. Since the users of ICT are likely to be members of the urbanized, intellectual, and political elite, monitoring has immediate information benefits for autocratic leaders. Our second test, the impact of Internet penetration on regime change, is less conclusive but clearly does not produce evidence to suggest that democracy advances in autocracies that expand the Internet. If anything, the relationship is the opposite. By looking at episodes of democratic and autocratic changes in low and high penetration countries after the introduction of Web 2.0 (2006–10), we find that the frequency of democratic shifts is higher in the low than in the high penetration group. Conversely, the strengthening of autocratic rule seems to be more frequent in the group of more rapid adopters. Finally, we illustrated how the introduction of the Internet can play into the hands of autocratic governments by looking more closely at the mechanisms of 348 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 52(3) repression associated with the new technology in Saudi Arabia. In sum, the first two decades of humankind’s experience with the Internet lends more support to the notion of ‘repression technology’ than ‘liberation technology’. As we have mentioned above, the Web is changing rapidly. Recent years have seen a huge increase in the adoption of social media and ‘Web 2.0’ technologies, which may lead readers to question whether the results presented in this article can tell us anything about the effect of ICT on political change today or tomorrow. It is our contention that they can. While user-friendly technology is being continually developed and made available at reasonable prices, so are tools of ‘repression technology’. As our results show, there is little evidence to back up the enthusiasm that has surrounded ICT development’s role in bringing about benign political change. As with many other types of technology, the Internet has its dark side. If democratic governments know how to take advantage of it – as evidenced in the recently leaked NSA and GCHQ programs – it might be naive to think that autocratic governments do not.