Authoritarian collaboration and repression in the digital age: balancing foreign direct investment and control in internet infrastructure

Abstract

Controlling the digital public sphere has become an important factor of authoritarianism in the twenty-first century. Authoritarian states are reluctant to accept foreign direct investment (FDI) in their internet infrastructure. However, expanding internet infrastructure is expensive, often necessitating FDI. We argue that investment from other autocracies allows incumbent dictators to provide internet access and use it for repressive purposes. Specifically, we contend that the more repressive an authoritarian regime is offline, the higher the share of FDI from other autocracies; and the more FDI from other autocracies, the less FDI prevents the internet from being used for online repression. We analyse how the level of offline repression predicts different ownership structures of internet service providers (ISPs) in authoritarian African countries, and use a difference-in-differences estimator to test how FDI from autocracies affects online repression. Using data from the Telecommunications Ownership and Control dataset, we find a positive relationship between levels of repression and share of FDI from autocracies; if at least one ISP is owned by a foreignautocratic investor, authoritarian regimes can expand repression online. Our study provides new insights into how authoritarian collaboration enables autocracies both to accept FDI in internet infrastructure and to leverage it for repressive ends.