Digital Technologies and Governance: Unpacking Differences by Regime Type

Digital communication technologies can both promote and constrain public spaces for deliberation and private spaces for individual autonomy. We explore the varied types of digital control to extrapolate the differing impacts on organized immaturity in different political regimes. We do this by applying the insights from existing research on restrictions of the digital sphere with three case studies from each political regime. In autocracies, the form of public and private digital spaces is the focus of restrictions, as citizens ought to remain immature with respect to organizing. In democracies, content within those spaces is the focus of restrictions, rather than the digital space itself. Hybrid democratic regimes restrict both content and form leading to a “worst of both worlds”-problem. Based on our analysis, we derive ethical and practical implications for business organizations seeking to operate in these contexts, particularly in hybrid regimes that are often seen by firms as “almost as good” as democracies but in practice have more in common with their authoritarian counterparts as concerns protection of civilians, digital users, and other stakeholders.