The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [146]
As Silvio Waisbord, a scholar of press freedom at the George Washington University, points out: “‘the state’ means functional mechanisms to institutionalize the rule of law, observe legislation to promote access to information, facilitate viable and diversified economies to support mixed media systems, ensure functional and independent tribunals that support ‘the public’s right to know,’ control corruption inside and outside newsrooms, and stop violence against reporters, sources, and citizens.” If the cyber-utopians believe their own rhetoric about crumbling institutions, they’ve got a major problem on their hands, and yet they repeatedly refuse to engage with it.
Nowhere is this more evident than in countries like Afghanistan, where an already weak government is made even weaker by various political, military, and social forces. We can continue celebrating the potential role of the mobile phone in empowering Afghan women, but the Taliban has terrorized many of the mobile networks into shutting down their services between certain hours of the day (avoiding compliance with the Taliban’s demands is not an option; when some carriers tried that, the Taliban responded by attacking cellphone towers and murdering their staff). The Taliban doesn’t want to shut the system down entirely—for they also use cellphones to communicate—but they still manage to show who is in control and to dictate how technology should be used. Without a strong Afghan government, the numerous empowerment opportunities associated with the mobile phone will never be realized.
Stephen Holmes, a professor of law at New York University, makes this point in an essay titled “How Weak States Threaten Freedom” published in the American Prospect in 1997. Commenting on how Russia was slowly disintegrating under the pressures of gangsterism and corrupt oligarchy, Holmes explains what many Westerners have overlooked: “Russia’s politically disorganized society reminds us of liberalism’s deep dependence on efficacious government. The idea that autonomous individuals can enjoy their private liberties if they are simply left unpestered by the public power dissolves before the disturbing realities of the new Russia.”
Internet enthusiasts often forget that if a government, even an authoritarian one, loses the ability to exercise control over its population or territory, democracy is not necessarily inevitable. As tempting as it is to imagine all authoritarian states as soulless Stalinist wastelands, where every single thing the government does aims at restricting the freedom of the individual, this is a simplistic conception of politics. Were the Russian or Chinese state bureaucracies to collapse tomorrow, it would not be pure democracy that would replace them. It would probably be anarchy and possibly even ethnic strife. This does not mean that either country is unreformable, but reforms can’t start by blowing up the state apparatus first.
This is yet another one of those instances in which the peaceful transition to democracy in postcommunist Eastern Europe was interpreted by the West as the ultimate proof that once a government run by authoritarian crooks is out, something inherently democratic would inevitably emerge in its place. The peaceful transition did happen, but it was the result of economic, cultural, and political forces that were rather unique both to the region and to that particular moment in history.