Can the internet promote democracy? A cross-country study based on dynamic panel data models

ABSTRACT

In the age of information revolution, information and communication technologies are penetrating all levels of societies and are also influencing the political aspect of each country by providing some facilities such as the Internet and web technologies. Democracy, as a universal value and a political system, is also well known and has an important role in the sublimation of the human societies. This study attempts to examine the effect of Internet extension on democracy promotion by using a panel consisting of 122 countries covering the period from the year 2000 to 2014. In order to estimate the effect, and also to deal with the endogeneity and autocorrelation problems, the dynamic panel data models are employed in the study. The results of estimation models indicate that Internet extension has a significantly positive effect on democracy promotion during the period. In the end, some ideas for further research are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Democracy
• the internet
• dynamic panel data models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ali Pirannejad is assistant professor at the Department of Public Administration, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. Also he is guest researcher at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands. His main research concerns the role of information and communication technologies in politics, especially e-government, e-participation, and e-democracy.

Notes

1. According to the four variables (Internet users, Democracy level, Education level, and GDP) which used in the current research, the study needs a dataset which contains completely all data of the variables for every country during the time period from 2000 to 2014. Based on this circumstance, some countries—which had no complete data for any of the variables during the period—were excluded from the study. Hence, the data of 122 countries—which had the complete range of data for the variables—were used in the study. In other words, based on the statistical concern, the data of all countries who had complete range of data for all the four variables were used and there was no selection process in order to prepare the panel data in the study.