Authoritarian Restraints on Online Activism Revisited
Why “I-Paid-A-Bribe” Worked in India but Failed in China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6140973 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yuen Yuen Ang (0000-0003-1476-8646, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 21-40 |
| Publication date | 2014-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4159 • E-ISSN: 2151-6227 |
| Publisher | Comparative Politics CUNY (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5129/001041514813623100 |
| OpenAlex | W3124495169 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 23 |
The spread of the Internet and new communication technologies has opened a new and potent avenue for contention in authoritarian regimes.Thus far, the study of authoritarian restraints on online activism has centered on direct measures of state control-primarily regulation, censorship, and repression. 1 Despite a surge of attention to online activism, 2 however, there has been scant analysis of the forms and origins of internal organizational problems among politically active cyber-communities in non-democratic societies.How do netizens organize and behave in authoritarian China compared to their counterparts in democracies? 3What does online behavior in China suggest about the limits of online activism under authoritarian rule?This essay provides a rare comparative study of online political participation in two contrasting political regimes: China and India.Focusing on I-Paid-A-Bribe (IPAB), a crowd-sourcing platform for reporting incidents of bribery anonymously, I examine why this site originated and thrived in India, whereas a bottom-up copycat effort in China fizzled out only months after it emerged.Through a comparative exercise, I look beyond the direct suppression of online activism by authoritarian states.I highlight instead the extended and often inadvertent effects of authoritarian rule in weakening the ability of netizens to self-govern and constructively engage the state.The transplantation of IPAB from India to China presents a unique analytic opportunity to cast in sharp relief the distinctive features of online state-society interactions in authoritarian China.In 2008, The Janaagraha Centre, based in India, founded the I-Paid-A-Bribe website, which mobilizes citizens to anonymously report encounters with bribe extraction. 4 Using these reports, the Centre tracks patterns of bribery and recommends anti-corruption measures to the government.Following its popular reception in India, spin-offs of IPAB spread to other countries, including China. 5 During the summer of 2011, replicas of IPAB sprang up across Chinese cyberspace, igniting enthusiasm in the online community.However, the spontaneous movement was short-lived.Only months after the appearance of these sites, most were forcibly or voluntarily closed
Authoritarianism · China · Democracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Social Media and Politics
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| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,57 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |