For three decades, America ran a radical experiment with the Internet and its underlying technology. It favored unfettered markets, laissez-faire policies, and the principle that censorship is a bad thing. This philosophy was enshrined in the Supreme Court decisions shielding nascent Internet platforms from censorship and in sweeping immunity granted to social media sites under Section 230 of the Communications Act.
But this experiment has limits. Because the Internet is a global interface, it can’t be bound to a single country’s laws and regulations. It must instead be governed by an entire ecosystem of policy makers, legislators, regulators, civil society groups, and tech and policy experts. This is an enormous and complex project with countless potential consequences that look very different from one jurisdiction to another.
Regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act provide an example of how a well-designed set of internet regulations can improve people’s lives online. These regulations can keep your information secure and prevent companies from sharing your private information with the wrong people. They can also protect you from seeing unwanted or harmful content.
This article uses a cross-country analysis to explore the relationship between state internet regulations and a country’s innovation performance. It applies a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to the V-Dem data and applies the principles of complexity theory. This approach highlights the core and peripheral conditions that influence a country’s innovation performance. It also shows how the different configurations of these factors contribute to high or low innovation.