Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule, and: Democracy and the Internet: Allies or Adversaries? (review)

In June 1989, Ronald Reagan made this prediction: "the Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip." ¹ The cataclysmic events that followed later that year seemed to validate his assessment. One after the other, socialist countries began the transition to democratic rule, a phenomenon that many attributed in part to the wide dissemination of democratic ideals that communications technology had permitted. In the early 1990s, the introduction of the Internet further eroded national borders, lending credence to the theory that the planet was becoming a "global village." While many expected that, through the Internet, democracy and human rights would spread like wildfire, others feared the emergence of an Orwellian "Big Brother."

Democracy and the Internet: Allies or Adversaries? by Leslie David Simon, Javier Coralles, and Donald R. Wolfensberger and Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule by Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas are among the first books to address the political effects of the Internet. Democracy and the Internet is a collection of three essays championing the democratic nature of the new medium. To support their thesis, the authors cite the Internet's effect on Latin America and the email-based operation of the U.S. Congress following the anthrax crisis. Conversely, Open Networks, Closed Regimes tests the theory of the Internet as a catalyst for democracy by investigating whether it has solidified the power of authoritarian regimes in China, Cuba, Burma, and Saudi Arabia.

What attributes of the Internet make it a potential vehicle for democratization? Leslie David Simon outlines several of them in Democracy and the Internet, including individual empowerment through the broader dissemination of ideas, more effective governance, and easier access to information. Javier Corrales then discusses the link between a market economy and the Internet, concluding that the new medium can be most helpful for consolidating democracy and open markets in countries experimenting with them for the first time. Finally, Donald Wolfensberger reflects on the challenge of distinguishing "e-liberation"—increased participation in the political process through the Internet—from deliberation. Wolfensberger notes that "e-liberation" may lead politicians to spend too much time analyzing public opinion polls and not enough time fashioning effective public policy.

Several questions remain unanswered. Perhaps the most obvious is why the authors do not separate the medium from its use. Why is it assumed that the Internet cannot be used to spread illiberal ideas and work against democracy by providing new opportunities for repressive governments to spread propaganda? After all, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century employed technology to stifle debate and pioneer new forms of repression. Or is democracy so inextricably linked to the Internet that any such effort is doomed to fail from the start? Democracy and the Internet cannot deal with all the issues in full. Though well written and pertinent, the reader should not by any means consider it to be the whole story. To their credit, the authors do not purport to provide final answers to these complex questions. They do, however, provide a solid basis for future consideration of the issues they introduce.

And indeed, Open Networks, Closed Regimes does exactly that, and it does it very well, by testing the aforementioned Reagan thesis on some authoritarian regimes. The authors begin their study by emphasizing that the impact of the Internet on politics is not preordained; it will depend on how people choose to use it. Indeed, conventional wisdom over the democratizing potential of the Internet often neglects the fact that in authoritarian states, the regime, by definition, controls access...