Table Of ContentInformation Technology and
World Politics
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Information Technology and
World Politics
Edited by Michael J. Mazarr
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND WORLD POLITICS
Copyright © Michael J. Mazarr, 2002.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2002 978-1-4039-6057-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2002 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
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other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other
countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-52621-5 ISBN 978-0-230-10922-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230109223
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Information technology and world politics / Michael J. Mazarr, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–4039-6057–7
1. Information technology—Economic aspects. 2. Information technology—
Political aspects. I. Mazarr, Michael J., 1965-
HC79.155 I5393 2002
303.48’33—dc21
2002068421
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Autobookcomp.
First edition: November 2002
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
1. Introduction: Information Technology and World Politics—
The Growing Connection
Michael J. Mazarr 1
Part One: Information Technology and the ‘‘Global Village’’
2. Stateless Nations: ‘‘I Pledge Allegiance To . . . ?’’
Glenn McCormick 11
3. Come Together? Debunking the Myth of the Internet and
the Global Village
Emil T. Bailey, Jr. 25
4. Subnational Groups and the Internet: An Irritant to
Globalization, Not a Threat
Tania Stanley O’Neil 43
5. The International Security Implications of Internet Use Via
Satellite
Glenn Hickok 55
Part Two: Information Technology, Freedom, and Civil Society—
Case Studies
6. Fujimori Meets Cabinas Publicas: The Internet, Journalism,
and Democracy in Peru
Richard Hughes 71
7. Beyond the Internet: Democracy on the Phone?
Alessandra Cabras 85
8. China, Democracy, and the Internet
Robert Peters 101
9. The Internet and the Evolution of Civil Society in Iran
Michael J. Rabasco 115
Part Three: The Internet and Economic Development
10. From Tea Sheds to Cyber Cafes: Could an Internet-Driven
Modernization Strategy Succeed in India?
Sudhir Mahara 133
11. Brain Drain: An Unintended Consequence of Wiring Brazil?
Ryan McMichael 145
12. www.AfricanOpportunity.com
Amanda Olson 161
About the Authors 179
Index 183
C H A P T E R 1
Introduction:
Information Technology and World
Politics—The Growing Connection
Michael J. Mazarr
This volume examines a subject that has so far received scant attention,
at least in terms of formal, rigorous research projects: the effect of
information technology on world politics, and specifically the growing
role of the Internet in promoting freedom and changing social and
political norms. There is no question that the connection is increasingly
important and potentially profound, but beyond those crude initial
truisms, not much is known for certain about the subject. Much of the
writing on it remains dominated by classic first-phase analysis, drawing
sweeping conclusions and making bold predictions on the basis of more
hunch than evidence. This volume is an attempt to take a further step in
the direction of understanding.
There are some obvious reasons to find import in the intersection of
the technology to disseminate information and the character of the
international system. The Internet has already begun to revolutionize
the conduct of business and government; its effect on world politics
may end up being equally as significant. History provides ample
2 MICHAEL J. MAZARR
evidence, from the origins of the printing press to the role of the
television in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, for the proposition that
the sudden widening of information access can have ripple effects
throughout societies. A handful of suggestive case studies, several of
them described in this book, provide tantalizing hints of the potential
role of such technologies as the Internet and cell phones in promoting
political reform and change in closed societies.
But there is an even deeper and more underlying connection at work
here—the tie between information technology and world politics on the
one hand and the process of globalization on the other.
The Internet would have had a substantial effect on world politics
under any circumstance. In the context of globalization, that effect is
magnified many times. A globalizing world is already one racing
through rapid change, already feeling the effects of the spread of
information and relationships, already confronting questions of cul-
tural identity and political control. The Internet and other emerging
information technologies accelerate this process, deepen it, exacerbate
its destabilizing effects, and sometimes become the scapegoats for those
effects.
The global spread of information, communications, and high-
technology development—and the social, economic, and cultural changes
that come with it—are generating both local instabilities and globe-
spanning tensions. From burgeoning anti-Americanism among Chinese
young people who fear cultural assault (and yet who express their views
in Internet chat rooms) to stresses within U.S. alliances to potent
mixtures of cultural and economic instability in the Middle East,
technoglobalization with an American tinge may be the most important
single author of U.S. security challenges in the next decade. The events
of September 11 would certainly seem to suggest that this is the case.
As Samuel Huntington and other theorists of the phenomenon
recognized decades ago, modernization is a destabilizing force—inexo-
rable, homogenizing, opposed to tradition, uprooting cultures whole-
sale in favor of the new, modern way of organizing society. Globalization
has now tended to both magnify and institutionalize the traditional
effects of modernization. International financial agencies demand rapid
and complete adherence to free-market economic policies. Global aid
organizations invest in and speed up the extension of literacy to whole
populations. Leading democracies push for rapid political and eco-
nomic liberalization in still-closed societies. All of this tends to make an
already wrenching process even more so.
It is under the shadow of these larger trends that the Internet has
begun intersecting with world politics in exciting, turbulent, and
INTRODUCTION 3
potentially destabilizing ways. This is true especially in its effect on the
process of democratization underway throughout the post-Soviet re-
gions and the developing world, including such major world powers as
China and India, and its growing connection to nationalist movements
across the globe.
Information technologies have already helped to advance democracy
in key countries around the world. From Indonesia to Malaysia to
Mexico to China, the Internet has spread information, allowed
nongovernmental groups to coordinate activities, and prompted grass-
roots activism in opposition to centralized authority. Partly as a result,
debates on the freedom of the Internet are already underway—among
governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), corporations,
other groups, and individual citizens—in these and other countries.
The link between democratization and open flows of information is
hardly new. This basic link was the justification, after all, for such cold
war information initiatives as Radio Free Europe. But the Internet has
given an old connection new bite, and the implications and trends
associated with this shift need to be better understood.
So, too, do the emerging effects of the Internet and other information
technologies on the far side of the democratization process, past the
initial overturning of dictatorship and into the hard work of fashioning
a new democratic system. The process of building a democracy is
fraught with transitional risks, and in fact countries in the transition to
democracy make war more often than authoritarian states or estab-
lished democracies. The process of democratization can go right,
creating a robust civil society, the rule of law, and true freedom; or it can
go wrong in a dozen ways, from xenophobic nationalism to military-
dominated praetorianism to a complete return to autocratic rule. Such
perilous transitions have been under way for over a decade in the areas
of the former Soviet Bloc. They have begun, in a different form,
throughout the quasi-closed societies of Asia, including China. The first
hints of a similar process can be seen in the Arab world.
Information technologies, led by the Internet, are sure to have a
profound effect on these processes of reform and change. They could
provide the means for nationalist groups to spread their exclusionary
message and recruit followers. They could give citizens of a country or
region access to global news and opinion, and thereby undermine the
arguments of local despots or demagogues. The emerging technologies
of the information revolution are likely to shape the global trend
toward democratization in important ways over the coming decade.
What is less clear is just what this effect will be. Some observers
believe (and hope) that the Internet will prove to be the most effective
