Authoritarian Diffusion and Democratic Backsliding in the Regulation of the Internet and Digital Innovation: A Methodological Framework

There is an increasing interest in studying the intersection between digitization, digital technologies, and authoritarianism in the context of global democratic backsliding. One primary concern has been the 'transnationalization' of authoritarianism (Diamond, Plattner, and Walker 2016; Michaelsen 2020). Most works focus on how technology helps authoritarian regimes extend their practices such as disinformation, repression, and surveillance beyond their borders (Glasius and Michaelsen 2018; Maerz 2016). Fewer works investigate how authoritarianism affects discourses, regulations, and uses of digital technologies globally. While democratic backsliding in the digital domain is increasingly evident, significant methodological challenges remain. Key among them is determining the extent to which new digital practices and policies linked to democratic backsliding are either triggered or inspired by authoritarian regimes. One reason is that we still lack a comprehensive methodological toolkit to investigate the diffusion of authoritarianism. We know that some authoritarian regimes serve as "authoritarian gravity centers" that spread authoritarian discourses, legal frameworks, and policies in their geographic proximity (Kneuer and Demmelhuber 2020). Earlier works also point towards a process of "authoritarian learning" that occurs amongst some authoritarian regimes (Heydemann and Leenders 2014). And while several works conceptually refine the authoritarian diffusion and its underlying dynamics, we still lack works that lay an empirically-grounded methodology to study the processes dynamics of authoritarian diffusion, particularly when this diffusion directed towards democratic. This paper contributes to developing this much needed methodology; we particularly focus on uncovering ways of tracking the diffusion and proliferation of authoritarian practices related to the regulation of digital innovation and the Internet. Our approach mixed deductive reasoning based on policy-diffusion literature with inductively generated knowledge we gather by exploring the cases of China, Iran, and Russia. We focus on the regulation of digital innovation and the internet for two key reasons. First, there is an urgent need to study the mechanisms of authoritarian influence in areas related to technology. Second, the involvement of a multitude of state, non-state, and quasi-state economic actors makes it particularly challenging to track diffusion. Our results can help identify areas and actors to examine when studying other domains of authoritarian diffusion. References: Diamond, Larry, Marc F. Plattner, and Christopher Walker. 2016. Authoritarianism Goes Global : The Challenge to Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Glasius, Marlies, and Marcus Michaelsen. 2018. “Authoritarian Practices in the Digital Age| Illiberal and Authoritarian Practices in the Digital Sphere—Prologue.” International Journal of Communication 12: 19. Heydemann, Steven, and Reinoud Leenders. 2014. “Authoritarian Learning and Counterrevolution.” In The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East, Columbia University Press, 75–92. Kneuer, Marianne, and Thomas Demmelhuber. 2020. Authoritarian Gravity Centers: A Cross-Regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion. Routledge. Maerz, Seraphine F. 2016. “The Electronic Face of Authoritarianism: E-Government as a Tool for Gaining Legitimacy in Competitive and Non-Competitive Regimes.” Government Information Quarterly 33(4): 727–35. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2016.08.008. Michaelsen, Marcus. 2020. The Digital Transnational Repression Toolkit, and Its Silencing Effects. Freedom House. Special Report. https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/digital-transnational-repression-toolkit-and-its-silencing-effects