INTERNATIONAL IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL DEMOCRATIZATION

Christopher Kedzie

We have argued that electronic mail networks create social capital by strengthening the mission-oriented and interpersonal ties within on-line communities. The social benefits in the domestic setting are addressed in Chapter Five. We now turn to the international arena into which the democratizing influences of e-mail extend. Since the technology, unconstrained by geographic borders and political barriers, shrinks the globe, the effect of interconnectivity on democracy worldwide is only one of myriad international implications warranting particular attention.

Increasingly, formal and informal e-mail assist relationships in transcending national frontiers. Universal e-mail in the United States with abundant international connections can help to spread the seeds of democracy even to nondemocratic lands. Global democratization is critically important to the future of democracy in America. According to scholars such as Samuel P. Huntington (1984) and Charles S. Maier (1994), the prospects for democracy here are inexorably linked to the state of democracy worldwide and our national commitment to global democratization.

Coincident Revolutions

Coincident revolutions at the end of the 1980s--breakthroughs in democracy, communication, and information technologies around the globe--have suggested to pundits and politicians that democratic freedom worldwide and electronic interconnectivity might be positively correlated. Prominently on Russian television in 1994, President Clinton made the association, "Revolutions [in] information and communication and technology and production, all these things make democracy more likely" (1994). Analysts too have postulated this relationship, but to date, all evidence has been anecdotal.[1] Most common are stories of fax messages rallying prodemocracy demonstrators outside the Chinese "Forbidden City" in 1989 and of the e- mail messages emanating from the besieged Russian "White House" during the failed coup of 1991.

This chapter begins substantive examination, both empirical and theoretical, into the relationship between new information and communications technologies and democracy. First, our investigations reject the "null hypothesis" that interconnectivity and democracy are not correlated. Then, we empirically examine the relationship through a variety of statistical lenses, followed by some comments on causality and some policy conclusions.

Visual evidence of this relationship is provocative. Figure 6.1 shows Freedom House democracy ratings for all countries of the world. Darker shading indicate higher levels of democracy.

Figure 6.2 is a comparable world projection denoting prevalence of major worldwide e-mail exchanging computer networks.

The metric used in the second chart is termed "interconnectivity."[2] Darker shading indicates a greater level of interconnectivity. Corresponding regions of dark and light on every continent reveal striking similarities between the two charts. The pattern similarity suggests a correlation and inspires more rigorous examination.

The two variables, democracy and interconnectivity, underlie this chapter's statistical analyses. Freedom House publishes quantitative measures of democracy in the Comparative Survey of Freedom for 1993-1994. This survey ranks every country in terms of "political rights," the extent to which people freely participate in selecting policymakers and formulating policy and "civil liberties," the extent to which people are able to develop and express ideas independent of the state's. Since the correlation between these two measures is high, the independent "democracy" variable used here is the normalized average.[3]

This use of Freedom House data conforms with academic practice for evaluating correlates to democracy.[4] There are inherent difficulties in quantifying a subjective multidimensional democratic quality across widely varying governments with a single scalar.[5] Despite these problems, a practical consensus for relative rankings prevails quite broadly. Conformity in ordinal rankings suggests that, although the concept of democracy may be difficult to describe explicitly, it is well understood intuitively (at least by Western analysts). Alex Inkeles noted this agreement between various metrics for democracy:

[D]emocracy is a distinctive and highly coherent syndrome of characteristics such that anyone measuring only a few of the salient characteristics will classify nations in much the same way as will another analyst who also measured only a few qualities but uses a different set of characteristics, so long as both have selected their indicators from the same larger pool of valid measures. Far from being like the elephant confronting the blind sages, democracy is more like a ball of wax. (Inkeles et al., 1990, p. 5.)

The prevalence of information revolution technologies may seem easier to quantify because it involves keeping track of tangible equipment. Yet, this variable is problematic, too. Some difficulties are definitional. As communication technologies increasingly overlap, recalling Ithiel de Sola Pool's "convergence of modes" (1983, p. 23), what to include becomes a difficult question to answer. Computers can send faxes; radio waves and television cables can carry e-mail messages.

Electronic mail is the specific focus of this study because it enables people to discourse across borders in ways that have never been possible. Of the numerous e-mail networks, four are globally dominant: Internet, BITNET, UUCP and FidoNet. Record keeping has not been consistent, regular, or accurate across the networks. The best available and most comprehensive data are for the numbers of nodes, which therefore constitute the basic unit of measure for interconnectivity in this report.

Nodes themselves, however, are not equal, even within the same network. A node may consist of a single computer and user or an entire organization with many of both. The Matrix Information Directory Service (MIDS) tracks and maintains historic data on the size of these networks aggregated by country. The "interconnectivity" metric used here is a combined measure of MIDS data on nodes per capita per country for each of the four major computer systems that can exchange electronic mail. Within each network, countries are ranked and scored with a number from 0 to 4. The 0 is assigned to all countries with no nodes in a particular network. The numbers 1 through 4 are assigned by quartile. The lowest quartile of countries with one or more nodes for a network receives a score of 1. The highest quartile of countries receives a score of 4. The sum of the four scores determines the level of interconnectivity on a scale from 0 to 16.

The combined scores weight each of the four networks equally because the ability to exchange e-mail is a relatively generic capability. Nevertheless, the equal weightings introduce some theoretic difficulties. Although each network supports e-mail, they are not necessarily comparable in other respects. For instance, the Internet, with specialized services such as the World Wide Web and remote log on, has much more functional capacity than the others. Therefore, it is arithmetically possible that a country with a low interconnectivity score and Internet actually may have more communications capability than a country with a higher score but no Internet. In practice, this is not likely to occur, and our analysis shows none of the potential degradation of this variable.

For several reasons, this theoretic possibility is not a practical problem. First, e-mail, but not necessarily the other services, offers the specific capability that is hypothesized to have dynamic implications for democratization: multidirectional discourse across borders in a timely and inexpensive manner, unbounded by geographic and institutional constraints.[6] Second, interconnectivity evolves. Less-capable systems are similarly less expensive and easier to implement, so initially they are more prevalent. Improvements to these systems ultimately incorporate Internet capabilities. Thus, a general progression emerges in the enhancement of interconnectivity that this scale approximates. Furthermore, to the extent that interconnectivity as a predictor for democracy is measured imprecisely, the effect is reduced statistical significance of the predictor. Thus, the conclusions would still be valid, a fortiori, from this analysis.

Empirical Analysis

Univariate Correlation

Figures 6.1 and 6.2 suggest a specific conjecture that univariate analyses support. A strong correlation between democracy and interconnectivity does, indeed, exist.

The scatterplot and accompanying regression line in Figure 6.3 display this relationship graphically, and the following correlation matrix in Table 6.1 displays this relationship numerically. The correlation matrix includes a set of social indicators that are often hypothesized as democracy's causal correlates. Descriptions and explanations of the variables follow these graphics.

The question of causality will be addressed in detail below, but as the matrix attests, the correlation coefficient for interconnectivity is not only large, it is substantially larger than that of any other traditional predictors of democracy. The coefficient on per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) is smaller by 0.16.

Economic development, reported here as a per-capita GDP (and abbreviated simply as GDP), is quantified in terms of purchasing power parity, as is traditional. Education is commonly paired with economic development as a predictor of democracy.[7] Direct causality is easy to imagine. An educated public is likely to be both more aware of political events and more capable of intervening to influence them. Indirectly, education conceivably enhances democracy by contributing to economic growth. The average number of years of schooling across the entire population is considered to be the best measure of education for analyses such as these (Rowen, 1995, p. 57).

Human development and health indicators also are often correlated with democracy. Most prevalent in the literature are infant mortality rates and life expectancies.[8] A causal argument could be posed that as citizens become more assured of their own well-being they have more incentive and wherewithal to demand civil rights and political liberties. Although these two measures, infant mortality and life expectancy, are highly correlated, forward causality seems more plausible in terms of the latter.[9]

Cultural and ethnic factors also may have certain roles in democratization. "Homogeneous national entities may be more likely to evolve into peaceable democracies than states rent by harsh linguistic and cultural antagonisms" (Gottlieb, 1994, p. 101). A measure of ethnic homogeneity is the percentage of the population that constitutes the largest ethnic group in a nation.[10]

In multivariate analyses, cultural differences across countries are potentially more important than the internal mix. Debates continue as to whether certain cultures or civilizations are favorably disposed or fundamentally disinclined to embrace democratic principles.[11] In either case, it is not difficult to believe that cultural aspects influence the characterization of the political regimes and the appreciation of personal liberties. To account for these effects, the dataset includes binary variables that indicate the culture with which each country most closely identifies. Demarcation between cultures can never be exact. Inexorably, the classification of some countries into any of the regional categories is susceptible to quibbling. Six regional categories were defined that incorporated elements of geography, history, and religion.

These six--Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Western Europe--map reasonably well onto the eight civilizations identified by Samuel Huntington (1993). Western Europe also includes countries that are not on the continent but that have a dominant Western European heritage: the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Israel also is included in the West European category. The Middle East category is predominantly Muslim, includes the Islamic North African states, and extends from Egypt to Pakistan. Africa is defined in fairly obvious geographic terms including South Africa, minus the northern states grouped into the Middle East. Asia includes the Confucian countries and the Pacific Islands, plus India and Japan, minus North Korea. Latin America stretches from Mexico through Argentina including all the Caribbean except Cuba. Cuba and North Korea, plus Albania and the splinter states of Yugoslavia, in addition to the members of the former Warsaw Pact countries, are all grouped in the Eurasian category.

Cultural influences may also shape the ways various people use communication technologies. Therefore, some of the regression models that follow include interaction terms that are the products of the binary regional variables and the interconnectivity scores.

Population completes this list of independent variables. Presumably, the size of a country could influence the type and effectiveness of governance. Small countries may be anomalous. Therefore, only countries whose populations exceeded 1,000,000 (and for which data are available) in 1993 are included in this study.[12] Above this threshold minimum, country populations have a skewed distribution that spans more than three orders of magnitude. Population, therefore, is best included here as an independent variable in a log form.

Multivariate Dominance

Like the maps presented above, the correlation matrix exhibits a surprisingly powerful correlation between interconnectivity and democracy. In large complex systems such international politics, simple relationships can rarely tell the whole story. Multiple linear regression can be a powerful technique to provide insight into convoluted interactions. As with other techniques, the answers are often influenced by the way the questions are asked. In other words, regression results can be model-specific. Therefore, several versions of the model offer various perspectives that can be integrated to form a comprehensive understanding of the interactions. Ultimately, the multiple linear regressions in this research provide further evidence that we cannot dismiss this correlation as spurious. Regression results of six representative and most informative models are shown in Table 6.2. Models I and II show the resulting statistical output of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions. Model I is an inclusive model involving six predictors.

Immediately apparent is that, again, interconnectivity emerges as the dominant predictor. With greater than 99.9 percent certainty, higher than that for any other predictor, one can reject the null hypothesis that there is no relationship between democracy and interconnectivity. Furthermore, the coefficient on interconnectivity is large. A single point increase on the interconnectivity scale corresponds to an increase of 5 points in democracy rating.

The correlation of GDP with democracy in this model, which is also statistically significant, is interesting in that the sign is negative. This result supports arguments of some scholars, as well as apologists for the Pinochet and Lee Kuan Yu economic development theories, that democracy is not without cost.[13] All else being equal, such as interconnectivity and population, greater economic development might be available only at the expense of democratization.

Years of schooling and life expectancy also show statistical significance. In the case of the latter, the negative sign is more difficult to explain, although this is the weakest of the significant predictors. The coefficient on population is also significant, but the size of a country's population, largely inaccessible to foreign intervention, offers scarcely few policy recommendations (except perhaps to shine a glimmer of hope on the fractious states of Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, which potentially may have a more democratic future than their larger predecessors.)

Model II contains a more parsimonious model retaining only GDP, the log of population, and the interconnectivity variable. These fewer variables continue to explain more than 50 percent of the variation in democracy for 141 countries. After excluding three predictors, the small drop in Adjusted R[2] (0.047) underlines the relative importance of interconnectivity. Alternatively, when retaining those three variables and excluding interconnectivity, the goodness of fit measure decreases by more than twice as much. In other words, interconnectivity alone may be more important for predicting the level of democracy than these three independent variables combined.

The effects of multicollinearity also deserve some attention. The correlation matrix in Table 6.1 indicates high correlations between many of the independent variables, particularly those of specific interest to this investigation: GDP, interconnectivity, and schooling. Collinearities between independent variables will tend to reduce the efficiency of predictors, but without bias. This means that the reported statistical significance may be less than the actual because the standard errors will be excessively large but the estimated coefficients will be neither higher nor lower than they ought to be. Relative to the result-specific tests, inferences regarding interconnectivity would not change because they appear with the highest reported level of statistical significance anyway. However, we may be slightly understating the effect of GDP (or the other predictors), since they may lose some statistical significance to the interconnectivity variable with which they are collinear. The magnitude of the coefficient on GDP is, nevertheless, quite small, and it is reported without bias in Model I. Furthermore, the coefficients themselves to not vary much with the consecutive inclusion or exclusion of the other independent variables. This indication, too, downplays the likelihood that multicollinearities could be adversely influencing these results.

Models III and IV, with the addition of the regional interaction terms, are analogous to I and II, respectively. These next two models show that the positive correlation of interconnectivity with democracy is consistent across and within regional boundaries. In all the regions, the coefficient is positive. In half of the regions, the coefficient is substantial and statistically significant. The correlation is most pronounced in those regions undergoing dramatic political transformation. This fact is important when considering causality. If the correlation were positive only where democracy preceded the information revolution, one might be able to argue that the latter strengthened the former but certainly not that the latter caused the former. The evidence, however, is that the relationship is weakest in regions characterized by established democracies and strongest in regions that are cultivating nascent democracies.

In Africa, the coefficient on the interaction term is the highest, and the t-statistics correspond to a 1 percent level of significance or better. In Eurasia, the results are similar with the t-statistic also indicating 1 percent as the lowest significance level. The coefficient is also substantial for Latin America with a 10 percent significance level on Model IV. The regression lines that accompany the six scatterplots in Figure 6.4 approximate these multivariate regression results for visual comparison. Western Europe shows the most paltry correlation. In this region, the high interconnectivity levels do not vary much and the high democracy ratings move even less.

Questions of Causality

It may be tempting to infer causality from these strong correlations and conclude that interconnectivity influences democratization. However, to do so might be premature. Causality could, in fact, flow in the opposite direction. Democracies rely on an informed public and uninhibited communication and may therefore seek interconnectivity. One way to test this possibility analytically is via a system of simultaneous equations and two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation. Simply, this two-equation model assumes that interconnectivity can influence democracy and also that democracy can influence interconnectivity. Then we can compare the relative statistical significance and sizes of the coefficients on these variables in each of the two equations. To perform these tests, both democracy and interconnectivity are both dependent variables in Model V. And to obtain a unique solution, at least one additional variable called an "instrumental variable" must be included in the interconnectivity equation. Since electronic mail is text-based and travels over telephones lines, appropriate instruments are percentage literacy and the number of telephone lines per capita. Independent variables in the democracy equation are, as before, related to economic growth, human development, and ethnicity.

The resulting regression coefficients are also listed above in Table 6.2. Interconnectivity remains a powerful predictor of democracy as before. The magnitude of the coefficient for interconnectivity on democracy is even greater than in the comparable OLS model. The level of significance remains exceptionally high. Democracy, however, does not prove to have any significant effect on interconnectivity. Thus, the suggestion that democracy leads to interconnectivity is not supported while the hypothesis that there is no positive effect cannot be rejected. The coefficient on population is still negative and significant. The coefficient on GDP is also still negatively and nearly significant at the 10 percent level. The other outputs also closely parallel those of Model I.

The other alternative explanation for the strong correlation between interconnectivity and democracy is that a third variable may influence both simultaneously. The obvious candidate is economic development, which many contend is an important prerequisite for democracy.[14] The correlation between interconnectivity and GDP, at 0.84, is also high, suggesting that the third variable hypothesis deserves further examination. In practical terms, equipment necessary to communicate electronically is expensive, especially for citizens of the Third World regions that Western democratization policy would be most eager to influence. The same economic resources that can finance participation in the communications revolution could conceivably fuel demands for personal rights and freedoms.

Again, a system of simultaneous equations can help unravel complex reciprocal effects. Model VI includes all three dependent variables: GDP, democracy, and interconnectivity. The following are the set of assumptions that underlie this three-equation model: Economic development and interconnectivity predict democracy; democracy and economic development predict interconnectivity; and interconnectivity and democracy predict economic development. We can compare the relative effects of the predictors as before in Model V. The interconnectivity equation uses the same two instrumental variables. The independent variables in the democracy equation are the same as before except that schooling is used to serve as an instrument for economic growth in accordance with prevailing theory. Scholars surmise that education can influence democracy by increasing personal and national wealth, as discussed above. The 2SLS estimation results, shown in Table 6.2, are consistent with all those that preceded and do not support the hypothesis of economic development as the confounding third variable. Strongly to the contrary, the regression coefficients for interconnectivity on democracy and GDP are both substantial and statistically significant, again above the 0.1 percent level. Neither democracy nor GDP proves to influence interconnectivity strongly. GDP again shows a negative correlation with democracy at a 10 percent significance level.

In each model presented here, without exception, interconnectivity positively correlates with democracy at high levels of significance. In each model, at lower but still high significance, the correlation with population on democracy is negative. Stories to explain both the country size and the interconnectivity phenomena may share a common plot. Smaller size and greater interconnectivity may similarly be conducive to democracy by facilitating coordinated civic action. Although perhaps clich[[??]], the often repeated analogy that information revolution technologies are shrinking the world offers appropriate insight. Interestingly, the most populous country that Freedom House labels as completely "free" became a democracy in 1776 when its population was only a fraction of its current size. At that time and at that size, available communication technologies, such as pamphleteering, were sufficient to gel public support into popular action.

It is the globe as a whole, however, that is "shrinking" in the wash of information flows. The worldwide expansion of democracy may have less to do with how these technologies favor domestic democratic processes than with how they spread democratic ideals internationally. Information revolution technologies enable citizens of prospective democracies to learn more about how other societies operate. If they discover that others living elsewhere live better thanks to democratic governance, they are likely to seek democratization. At the same time, information revolution technologies empower citizens anywhere to broadcast charges that their own governments have violated inalienable human rights. Thus, world pressure can be brought to bear against repressive regimes unable to hide their misdeeds as successfully as before. That demonstrators in Tiananmen Square displayed signs written in English was not a coincidence. Cross-border communication in the defense of democracy and human rights is the activity on which citizen diplomacy groups such as Amnesty International stake their success. The new technologies enhance these capabilities.

Governments that try to squelch the new information technologies to protect their monopoly on power do so essentially at the peril of economic growth. This is the inference from Model VI and is precisely what leading analysts have been predicting: "For nations to be economically competitive, they must allow individual citizens access to information networks and computer technology. In doing so, they cede significant control over economic, cultural, and eventually political events in their countries" (Builder, 1993, p. 160).

Conclusions and Recommendations

Despite inherent limitations of statistical analyses, every analytic perspective of this study coherently and repeatedly emphasizes that interconnectivity is a powerful predictor of democracy, more so than any of democracy's traditional correlates.

Measurable effects of this technology on global democratization resonate with arguments to justify a national universal e-mail system: E-mail can help vitalize or reinvigorate democratic governance. Thus, the analysis from this chapter leads to two important conclusions. First, the United States should support increased interconnectivity abroad, as this may aid the spread of democracy. Second and more broadly, the development of a national e-mail system must consider the international implications. Worldwide democratization is both a critical and demonstrable implication, but there are others. Previous chapters have alluded to standardization and security, for example. "National" in the context of e-mail is at best a misnomer; at worst, it could mislead policy. Policies that derive specifically from a commitment to universalize e-mail within this country will interact with and affect events far beyond the domestic milieu.

[2]"Interconnectivity" is a term popularized by Larry Landweber for his measures of the proliferation of global e-mail networks.

[3]Freedom House rates countries on a decreasing basis from 7 to 1 in both categories, civil liberties and political rights. A ranking of "1" indicates the highest relative accordance with the principles of democracy, and a ranking of "7," the lowest. The normalized average used here and elsewhere (see Rowen, 1995, or Muller and Seligson, 1994, for other examples) converts the scale to one that increases from 0 to 100, such that maximum democracy has the highest rating.

[4]For several examples see, the World Bank (1991), Starr (1991), Helliwell (1992), Lipset, Seong, and Torres (1993), Muller and Seligson (1994), Boone (1994), and Rowen (1995).

[5]Many of the measurement and statistical difficulties are addressed in considerable depth by Inkeles et al. (1990) and Dahl (1971).

[6]The essence of multidirectional communication is that all people who receive information via a certain information channel can participate equally within the complete and identical context of the discussion. Another term commonly used to describe multidirectional communication has been "many-to-many." However, this term can be misleading. The connotation of "many" in one-to-many can be the billion or so people around the globe who watch soccer's World Cup, which would of course be impossibly unwieldy for many-to-many. More important, quantifying the number of participants misses the most critical aspect of multidirectional communication. Independent of how many people are involved--even if there are only three--e-mail technology creates a different dynamic from unidirectional broadcast or bidirectional intercourse and thus might be expected to have differing social and political outcomes.

[7]For examples see Lipset (1959), Helliwell (1992), Lipset, Seong, and Torres (1993), and Rowen (1995).

[8]For examples, see the World Bank (1991) and Boone (1994).

[9]United Nations Development Programme (1993) provided all the economic, education, and health data used in these analyses.

[10]These data are published in the CIA World Fact Book (1993). In a few cases, mostly in Northern Europe and Africa, these data were not available. Where applicable, the percentage of largest religious affiliation substituted for the missing data.

[11]For characteristic arguments from both sides of the debate, see Huntington (1993) and Schifter (1994).

[12]Data were either missing or relative to inconsistent entities for many of the new countries resulting from the recent breakups of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Therefore, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia were excluded from this study. Additionally, critical missing data precluded the inclusion of Taiwan.

[13]For more discussion on the potentially negative economic consequences of democratization, see Shin (1994) or Rothstein (1991).

[14]The seminal work on this topic is Lipset (1959) but the literature is large. Also see, for example, Helliwell (1992), Lipset, Seong, and Torres (1993), and Rowen (1995).