Digital Capacity and Digital Authoritarianism: A Comparative Examination of South Asia

Although studies on digital authoritarianism are expanding, research on digital authoritarianism is predominantly focused on China—whether as a single case study or on China’s “exporting” of digital authoritarianism. While this focus is understandable given China’s technological capacity and global influence, it has inadvertently limited the scope of scholarly inquiry on the global rise of digital authoritarianism. Countries with less geopolitical influence but notable records of digital authoritarianism such as in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa remain underexamined. This imbalance has left a gap in contextualized analyses that account for how digital authoritarianism manifests in smaller states with distinct political and social dynamics. Notably a growing body of literature is beginning to study digital authoritarianism beyond the familiar cases of China and Russia. This paper aims to contribute to that emerging scholarship by examining South Asian countries—namely, Indian, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal—in order to offer a nuanced and regionally grounded perspective on how digital authoritarianism are adapted and localized. Thematically, this paper focuses studying digital authoritarianism in relation with digital capacity. While a substantial body of academic and non-academic research examines individual components of states’ digital capacity such as internet shutdown, internet filtering, or online censorships, few studies have situated these practices to the wider phenomenon of digital authoritarianism. A few studies that have examined the interaction between states’ digital capacity and digital authoritarianism identify a “capacity gap,” meaning that autocratic regimes often implement more digital authoritarianism than their capacity alone would predict, while democratic regimes tend to do the opposite. To that end, this paper examines the interaction between states’ digital capacity and digital authoritarianism in South Asia. It asks: how does a state's digital capacity—whether technical, infrastructural, or resource-based—influence its tendency to engage in digital authoritarian practices in South Asia? In examining this research question, this paper aims to understand how South Asian government are adapting and deploying digital authoritarianism in similar and distinct ways.