Dr Dara Conduit1
1University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Dara Conduit is an Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellow and Lecturer in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. Her research sits at the intersection of authoritarian politics and cyber technology. Her work has been published in journals including Democratization, Political Geography, Government and Opposition and The Middle East Journal. Her book The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, which was published by Cambridge University Press, won the 2020 Oceania Book Prize for International Studies. Dr Conduit is the founding co-convener of the APSA Authoritarian and Challenging Environments Research Group and the WoMENA network. She is a member of the editorial board of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, and also sit on the advisory board of the Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance (AWADA).
Abstract:
Digital authoritarianism, a term used to describe the adoption of increasingly sophisticated technology by authoritarian regimes, has been widely viewed as a game-changing development that is supporting an authoritarian resurgence. But while the observation of technology use by authoritarian regimes has often focussed on the latest technological developments, less attention has been given to understanding the relationship between digital authoritarianism and pre-existing aspects of authoritarianism such as authoritarian economics. This paper responds to this gap, asking: How does digital authoritarianism interact with pre-existing dynamics of authoritarian economics?
To answer this question, the paper examines the political economy of digital authoritarianism in Iran. The paper finds constant and significant overlap between the existing political economy of authoritarianism and that of digital authoritarianism, which suggest that the economic aspects of authoritarianism are relatively continuous and stable, despite the often-headline grabbing nature of authoritarian technology use. The persistence of authoritarian economics also has significant implications for the implementation of digital authoritarianism, because while a state’s economy can provide a raft of opportunities to enhance its implementation, it also conveys significant risks that act as a brake on some of the most extreme manifestations of the phenomenon.