Authoritarian Innovation and Diffusion in the Digital Era: Centres, Networks, and Global Dynamics

Abstract

Kneuer and Demmelhuber (2016) argue that authoritarian gravity centres drive both the active promotion of autocracy and related diffusion effects, largely within regional contexts. In a digitally interconnected world, however, diffusion is no longer constrained by geography. This panel explores how digital technologies and governance models enable new forms of authoritarian innovation and transnational diffusion. It seeks to identify and compare centres of authoritarian innovation, map their regional clusters, and examine their global impact. The discussion will consider how authoritarian governance evolves through both technological advancement and organisational adaptation, asking what truly constitutes “innovation” in such contexts. It will move beyond the notion of discrete centres (e.g., Beijing, Moscow, Tehran) to analyse networked or polycentric diffusion, where state agencies, private firms, and intermediary actors, such as tech companies, state-owned enterprises, and diasporic networks, co-create ecosystems of control. The panel will also investigate how infrastructure ownership in domains like telecommunications, cloud computing, AI hardware, and digital payments transforms certain states or corporations into hubs of authoritarian influence. The panel encourages exploration not only of regional clusters of diffusion, across the post-Soviet space, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, but also of global pathways of influence and less expected centres of authoritarian innovation. Key guiding questions include: Are authoritarian gravity centres hierarchical or polycentric? How do crises accelerate authoritarian innovation and diffusion? What are the limits of diffusion, and how do local political cultures, economic dependencies, and public resistances create friction? By integrating these perspectives, the panel aims to advance the understanding of authoritarian innovation as a dynamic and globally networked process shaping the digital order of the twenty-first century.

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