A Democratic Recession: The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism After The COVID-19 Pandemic

By Jama Willis, Gerald Xu, Claire Zhai, and Sammy Tin

Research Paper

Governance & Society

“Coronavirus kills its first democracy,” the Washington Post declared in March 2020, after the Hungarian parliament voted to give Prime Minister Viktor Orban the authority to rule by decree in the name of fighting COVID-19. Democracy is being degraded around the world because people are losing faith in the legitimacy of elections and see freedom of expression being stymied, among a range of other problems, according to a global body founded to promote democracy worldwide. Given the recent decline in democracies during the COVID-19 pandemic, we refer to this period as a “democratic recession.” We believe this during this time period manifested a new trait of democratic backsliding, within democratic regimes, known as “digital authoritarianism.” Digital authoritarianism — the use of digital information technology by democratic and authoritarian regimes to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic and foreign populations — is a tool used to reshape the power balance between democracies and autocracies; government, state actors, and powerful political actors play a critical role in deteriorating the freedoms of citizens through digital media. Based on this increasing trend after the COVID-19 pandemic, did a new strain of democratic backsliding, called digital authoritarianism, arise, and how can combat this rise?

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