Political and Economic Tradeoffs: Understanding the Dictator’s ‘Digital Dilemma.’

As the Internet and digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) have spread globally, governments around the world have struggled to understand the transformative impacts of these technologies and determine how best to govern them.  This challenge has been particularly acute for nondemocratic states where availability of the new technologies offered citizens new mechanisms for free expression, association, information sharing, and protest mobilization.  Left unrestricted, these new tools and civic spaces could contribute to political instability, risking the downfall of the ruling regime.  But rulers have also had to consider potential economic and political costs of restrictions. 

The concept of a “Digital Dictator’s Dilemma” first surfaced in the late 2000s and early 2010s in analyses seeking to make sense of these tradeoffs (Drezner 2010; Zuckerman 2008).  Models suggested that “dictators” select optimal restriction levels to maintain an equilibrium of control within the new technological environment.  The concept featured in debates between web-idealists and cyber-realists, supporting arguments for why the Internet’s long-term impact on society would likely bend more towards liberation and democratization or control and repression (Diamond 2010; Shirky 2011; Morozov 2011).  Researchers used it to examine why policy responses differed across nondemocratic states, explaining variation between more and less repressive approaches.  While dictator’s dilemma models constitute a significant simplification of complex, globally interdependent and sometimes-decentralized processes, these approaches – properly-caveated – can be useful tools for better understanding the history and ongoing development of digital authoritarianism.

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