More Internet = More Democracy?

Since 1989 when Tim Burners Lee first invented the World Wide Web, the Internet has contributed enormously to communication development. Diverse forums, video sharing websites, blogs, etc. enable people to get their voices heard by a large number of others. It raises the question that is there a relationship between unrestricted use and available access of the Internet in a particular country and its level of democracy?

According to the “Democracy Index” complied by The Economist, based on the answers of the 60 survey questions, countries are classified into four groups:
1. Full Democracies (scores of 8 -10)
2. Flawed Democracies (scores of 6 - 7.9)
3. Hybrid Regimes (scores of 4 - 5.9)
4. Authoritarian Regimes (scores below 4)

“Internet access” can be defined as the percentage of internet users among the whole population.

The relationship will be evident if we compare the two major sources mentioned above. First, let’s take a look at the first 10 countries on the list of Democracy Index of 2008:
Now let's take a look at their percentages of Internet usage:I found it quite interesting that the top four countries on the list, i.e. Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Netherlands, are the same ones as those top four on Democracy Index, with a little difference in ranking. The similarity suggests that the relationship between larger Internet access and higher level of democracy can be true.I checked these countries from Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions. It is not surprising that they have similar structures. In fact, these countries can be categorized into Scandinavian countries which have common Scandinavian cultural dimensions: relatively low power distance, extremely high individualism, extremely low masculinity and medium uncertainty avoidance.

When we take a look at the other end of the Democracy Index, they are mainly African countries, Middle East countries and some Asian countries. Checking the figures of their Internet coverage, most of these countries have really low Internet usage. In other words, the penetrations are mostly under 2%.

Democracy Index survey for 2008

Internet Penetration (% Population)

The two graphs listed above show similarities in those countries which have low democracy index and those which have very low internet coverage.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that, the higher the Internet usage is, the higher the democracy level is. Or the lower the Internet usage is, the lower the democracy level is.

Still, there are some special cases. For instance, Saudi Arabia (Democracy Index: 1.90, Authoritarian regime), the 7th least democratic country, has an Internet coverage of 26.8%, much higher than that of South Africa (9.4%). However, the South Africa (Democracy Index: 7.91) is actually categorized as a Flawed Democracy country. In spite of special cases like this, the relationship still generally exists.