theory, developed by the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, posited that the period was marked by the emergence of “the third wave” of worldwide democratization, with more and more countries choosing democratic forms of governance. (It was “third” because, according to Huntington, it followed the first wave, which lasted from the early nineteenth century until the rise of fascism in Italy, and the second, which lasted from the end of the Second World War until the mid-1960s.)
It was too tempting not to see those two third waves as coinciding at some point in recent history, and 1989 looked like the best candidate. Such views often implied the existence of a strong causality between the march of democracy around the globe and the onset of the information revolution, a relationship that was often inferred but only rarely demonstrated. “Dictator’s dilemma” has become a useful moniker, a way to capture the inevitability of authoritarian collapse when faced with fax machines, photocopiers, and so forth. Following George Schultz’s lead, between 1990 and 2010 plenty of senior U.S. government officials, including James Baker, Madeleine Albright, and Robert Gates, spoke of “dictator’s dilemma” as if it were common sense. But it was Columbia University’s outspoken economist Jagdish Bhagwati who captured the essence of “dictator’s dilemma” most eloquently: “The PC [personal computer] is incompatible with the C.P. [Communist Party].” As a free-spirited intellectual Bhagwati can, of course, believe whatever he wants without having to pay attention to the developments in the real world, but political leaders don’t have that luxury, if only because the effectiveness of future policies is at stake. The danger of succumbing to the logic of “dictator’s dilemma,” as well as other similar beliefs about the inevitable triumph of capitalism or the end of history, is that it suffuses political leaders with a dangerous sense of historic inevitability and encourages a lazy approach to policymaking. If authoritarian states are facing such a serious, even lethal dilemma, why risk tipping the scales with some thoughtless interventions? Such unwarranted optimism inevitably leads to inaction and paralysis.
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times foreign affairs columnist, in his typical fashion, trivialized—and did much to popularize—the “dictator’s dilemma” fallacy by coining a new buzzword: “Microchip Immune Deficiency Syndrome” (MIDS). MIDS is a “disease that can afflict any bloated, overweight, sclerotic system in the post-Cold War era. MIDS is usually contracted by countries and companies that fail to inoculate themselves against changes brought about by the microchip and the democratization of technology, finance and information.” Thanks to the Internet, authoritarian governments are doomed: “Within a few years, every citizen of the world will be able to comparison shop between his own ... government and the one next door.” (For some reason, however, Americans, with all their unfettered access to the Internet, don’t hail Friedman’s advice, failing to do much government-shopping on their own and see that other governments have far more reasonable approaches to, for example, imprisoning their citizens.) Nicholas Kristof, Friedman’s more sober colleague at the New York Times, is also a strong believer in the inevitability of the information-driven authoritarian collapse, writing that “by giving the Chinese people broadband,” the Chinese leaders are “digging the Communist Party’s grave.”
Thus, it’s still common to assume that the Internet would eventually tear authoritarianism apart by dealing it a thousand lethal information blows. Tough leaders can’t survive without information technology, but they will crumble even if they let it in, for their citizens, desperate for Disneyland, Big Macs, and MTV, will rush to the streets demanding fair elections. The problem with this view is that when it comes to assessing the empirical evidence and considering the case of the Internet, it’s hard to think of a state that actually didn’t survive the challenges posed by the dilemma. Save for North Korea, all authoritarian states have accepted the Internet, with China having more Internet users than there are people in the United States. Where the pundits and the policymakers have failed is in understanding the sophistication and flexibility of the censorship apparatus built on top of the Internet. One crucial assumption behind “dictator’s dilemma” was that it would be impossible to design precise censorship mechanisms that could block openly political Internet activity and yet allow any Internet activity—perhaps even make it faster—that helped to foster economic growth. This assumption has proved to be false: Governments have mastered the art of keyword-based filtering, thus gaining the ability to block websites based on the URLs and even the text of their pages. The next