Authorized Authorized

26 WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2016
Box O.6 Nailing Jell-O to the wall—restrictions on the flow of
information
Governments also interfere directly with digital networks
to control access to information. An early internet pioneer,
John Gilmore, claimed, “the Net interprets censorship as
damage and routes around it.” a And Bill Clinton in 2000
said, “trying to control the internet is like trying to nail
Jell-O to a wall.” b Yet private software vendors and state
institutions have figured out ways to censor access to internet
content, whether by shutting down the entire national
web domain, as the Arab Republic of Egypt did in 2011 for
five days; by preventing access to specific domestic or
foreign websites; or by targeting individuals’ blog posts
or other social media postings. Google received 6,951
requests from governments in 2013 to remove content from
search results, with the largest numbers from Turkey, the
United States, and Brazil. Other countries, including China
and the Islamic Republic of Iran, block Google and some
other internet sites completely, although such restrictions
may change in the future.
Governments of all types restrict access to content such
as child pornography, hate speech, insults, or criticisms of
authority figures, challenges to cultural or religious morals,
or reporting of uprisings or accidents. When accountable
governments determine what should be censored, the
result reflects broad societal preferences. In autocratic
countries, where use of the internet in government is often
as high as in democratic countries (figure BO.6.1), leaders
face a dilemma. If they permit open discourse on the internet,
they risk challenges to their authority. If they do not,
they risk isolating themselves from the global information
economy. This is a balancing act, and countries are becoming
more sophisticated in calibrating their control—for
example, censoring content that might encourage collective
action, but not individual criticism.
Internet filtering and censorship impose welfare and
economic costs. First, the cost of censoring or filtering internet
content diverts public funds from other uses. Monitoring
domestic internet traffic and selectively blocking foreign
websites requires large financial resources, technical knowhow,
and dedicated staff—all of which could be deployed
for more productive tasks. Second, filtering and methods to
circumvent it can slow the speed of internet access, which
hurts business users. Third, filtering can restrict access to
economically or scientifically useful information, such as
the Google Scholar search engine for academic papers—
indispensable in universities and labs. Fourth, in the view
of the European Union, for instance, blocking foreign
Figure BO.6.1 Autocratic governments have promoted e-government
while censoring the internet
1.0
a. e-government provision,
by government type
Substantial
b.
Internet filtering level,
by government type
Online service index
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
Selective
Suspected
0
–10 –5 0 5 10
Autocracy
Democracy
None
Autocracy Democracy
Type of content filtered
Political Social
Conflict and security
Sources: WDR team, based on Polity IV 2015; UN 2014; Open Net Initiative 2013. Data at http://bit.do/WDR2016-FigBO_6_1.
Note: The Polity IV project defines government types based on characteristics such as competitiveness and openness of executive recruitment, constraints
on the chief executive, and regulation and competitiveness of participation in the political process. The combined score varies from –10 for a pure
autocracy to +10 for a pure democracy. See the Polity IV user’s manual for details.
(Box continues next page)