State Capacity in the Digital Age: Explaining Varieties of Information Controls in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Governments worldwide, including those with similar regime types, have employed different Internet control strategies. For example, while the 2023 Varieties of Democracy project similarly categorised China and Russia as autocracies, China has established a nationwide, government-run technical censorship system (i.e., the so-called “Great Firewall”), while as of 2024, Russia has not. Also, some democracies have censored online content but have not shut down the Internet in times of political instability as of 2024 (e.g., Malaysia and the Philippines), while others have performed both censorship and shutdowns (e.g., India and Indonesia). What explains this variation? I argue that divergence in state capacity contributes to the variation in Internet controls. State capacity to control the Internet consists of the state’s ability to manipulate or alter the Internet’s virtual and physical infrastructure using technical means, enforce broad and punitive legal liabilities against Internet companies and users, or both. Using qualitative data from fifty-three remote interviews conducted over fifteen months, secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles, reports, and government-issued press releases, and an original dataset containing routing analysis of Internet traffic over one year, I develop my argument using Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines as case studies. My research shows that if the government were centrally involved in the coordination or functioning of the Internet infrastructure, then the technical manipulation of this infrastructure would be straightforward to achieve. When technical interference was not viable or sufficient, states enforced laws and regulations against Internet companies and users to suppress or restrict information online. States have deployed technical and legal mechanisms in concert to perform information controls. By explaining why varieties of Internet controls exist, my research speaks to the growing literature on the politics of Internet regulation and its impact on democratic processes. My work also challenges popular assumptions on the proliferation of information controls, such as the adoption of China’s authoritarian Internet governance practices by countries in Southeast Asia. It suggests that information control adoption was not only influenced by geopolitical or national security considerations but also by the interplay of domestic infrastructure and institutions.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Poetranto, Irene Poetriani
Institution: University of Toronto
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7133064828