Internet regulations are a complex patchwork of laws and policies that address issues such as online privacy, security, copyright, and e-commerce. Some examples of such regulation are the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or California’s Consumer Privacy Act. Other laws regulate content on websites, prohibiting harmful speech or fraud in online business transactions. Some laws also address cybersecurity, by requiring organizations to implement measures and report breaches.
Many of these regulations are imposed by governments as a form of protectionism. For example, a US law restricting the collection of personal information for behavioral ads can be viewed as anticompetitive in that it reduces the ability of small platforms to compete with large ones and thus raises prices for consumers. Such legislation is driven by a belief that large internet companies are behaving recklessly and threatening freedom of expression. However, the end result of these and other such laws may not be an improved internet, but one in which there is less innovation and fewer new services because of reduced investment by investors and lower revenue for covered internet companies.
This article uses a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis approach and Complexity Theory to investigate the relationship between state internet regulations, their coverage, the government’s capacity to control them, and a country’s innovative performance. Publicly available cross-country data for 130 countries are used to examine the causal combinations of these variables.
About the Author
