A Smart City Model at Autocracies’ Disposal: Digital Infrastructure as a Tool of the Social and Political Control

During the last years, the studies of digitalization process have begun discussing a digital authoritarianism. Various-type autocracies adapt to the changed technological environment, and use the digital infrastructure for implementing new social and political control mechanisms. A new model of governance and economy is created on the basis of the digital infrastructure. Many autocracies favour the digitalization of the economy and public administration and services, because it provides them with the advantages in addition to social and political control mechanisms. The most frequent example under analysis is the Chinese social credit system established by the government in cooperation with IT-companies. This system is directly associated with the integrated digital infrastructure forming the base of the Chinese smart cities. An important part thereof is the network of public and private cameras featuring face recognition technology. Another example of the digital infrastructure use by autocracies is Philippines, where the government is implementing the «Safe Philippines Project». Project scales the practice originally deployed in Davao, where local government established the Intelligent Operations Center, a locals data centre, which includes face recognition cameras. According to human rights organizations, the anti-drug campaign and digital infrastructure were used by the government for persecution of the opposition. The case of Philippines is of interest for studying the technological cooperation of autocracies and the export of Chinese smart city model. «Safe Philippines Project» is implemented with help of Huawei, which have close relations with Chinese government, it will partially reproduce the social credit system practice. This paper is focusing on review of the mechanisms of functioning of an integrated digital infrastructure under creation in autocratic regimes (on the example of the Russian Federation). The methodological framework of the research - theories of «surveillance сapitalism» (J.B. Foster,  S.Zuboff), also the governmentality methodology was used for describing transformations of the strategy of social and political control. Methodology of governmentality studies allows conceptualization of the production process of subjectivity type, partially internalizing the functions of political and social control, that had previously been performed by the government. General subject matter under research is the strategy of the digital infrastructure use by the government of the Russian Federation on the example of Moscow. Theoretically the mechanisms are revealed of forming a a depoliticized system of feedback from the citizens, superseding in part the absence of democratic institutions and procedures («Active Citizen» app). It is shown, how in the context of non-democratic regime the government uses the digital infrastructure as a technology of individualization and depoliticization. Moreover, the block-chain technology use for the elections control and legitimization is analysed based on the examples of experimental electronic voting in several districts in the elections of the Moscow City Duma deputies. The article is analysing the application of the digital infrastructure (shutdown of the mobile and public internet, searching and arresting the protesters by means of the surveillance system cameras) to fight the street protests on the example of mass demonstrations against registration of candidates and the process of the Moscow City Duma deputies elections.