CIAO DATE: 03/03

Open Networks, Closed Regimes:
The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule

Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor Boas

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

January 2003

Summary

As the Internet diffuses across the globe, many have come to believe that the technology poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Grounded in the Internet's early libertarian culture and predicated on anecdotes pulled from diverse political climates, this conventional wisdom has informed the views of policy makers, business leaders, and media pundits alike. Yet few studies have sought to systematically analyze the exact ways in which Internet use may lay the basis for political change.

In Open Networks, Closed Regimes, the authors take a comprehensive look at how a broad range of societal and political actors in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries employ the Internet. Based on methodical assessment of evidence from these cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—the study contends that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.

 

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Conventional Wisdom: What Lies Beneath? (PDF, 12 pages, 88 KB)

Chapter 2. Wired for Modernization in China (PDF, 30 pages, 148 KB)

Chapter 3. Channeling a "Limited" Resource in Cuba

Chapter 4. Catching Up and Cracking Down in Singapore, Vietnam and Burma

Chapter 5. Technology and Tradition in the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Egypt

Chapter 6. Beyond Blind Optimism

List of Acronyms

Glossary

Bibliography

Index