As debates regarding the role of information technologies in political and social movements abound, particularly in the aftermath of global and transnational protests in recent years, several perspectives have been offered in the attempt to elucidate the causal factors behind peaceful regime change and meaningful democratization in some of the few remaining authoritarian strongholds in the world today. Of these competing perspectives and analyses, Nivien Saleh's Third World Citizens and the Information Technology Revolution is an important and necessary addition for expanding the domain of inquiry and range of actors we must consider and theorize upon in order to draw reasonable conclusions. Saleh's detailed case study of Egypt presents and develops an analytical approach focusing deeply on the historical and political economic contexts of information infrastructure before the period of rapid mobilization now popularly termed the “Arab Spring.” The book helps to bridge the vast divide between perspectives that tend to focus exclusively on the politics of technology regulation or on the agency of citizens who make use of these globalized communication systems, respectively.
It has been more than two years since the unprecedented protests began in Tunisia and escalated quickly to Egypt, then throughout the Arab state system, and further evidence has emerged that ensuing autonomous protests, like Occupy Wall Street and the Indignados, have drawn direct inspiration from the Arab and Egyptian experiences throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa. The sheer diversity and challenge of theorizing the conditions, causes, and strategies that might make information technologies politically consequential is particularly daunting, yet necessary. Existing studies in communications, political science, and sociology have already expanded the key variables necessary for understanding the contemporary repertoires that enable new forms of social mobilization and political action. And in almost every instance, critical observations have noted the young demographic of 20- to 30-year-old activists who were critical in sparking recent protests; in closed and repressive political systems, they have increasingly turned to online spaces to design strategies, build social capital, and coordinate offline action. But in important ways, there is an increasing consensus that the very tools and infrastructures enabling democratization can and are being used by authoritarian states and repressive regimes for social and political control.
So who sets the rules undergirding the platforms that support these recently proliferated extensions of civil society and state power in the virtual world? How have they come about, and what might a critical understanding of this historical process tell us about the mediation of power and politics in developing states? Saleh's work does the important job of looking behind the scenes of the façade of “Facebook revolutions” or “Twitter revolutions.” By examining the history of the information technology revolution in Egypt, which is strongly tied to the needs of economic development and the challenges of globalization, the author has offered a decidedly critical realist approach. Given this analytical lens, the definition of research questions, and selection of social actors to be examined, Saleh offers a necessary investigation of the international regimes behind technology regulations and the social construction of technology uses in Egypt.
The book is organized in three thematic parts, composed of 11 chapters. Part I tells the early story of global telephony and the economic logic of the industrial era operating primarily within advanced democratic economies. Readers and students interested in having a deep understanding of contemporary telecommunication politics should read this part carefully before moving forward, as most contemporary telecommunication issues are continuations of these preexisting conflicts of stakeholder interests.
Part II then provides the bulk of the analysis and new material through a case study of Egypt. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 extend the analysis by drawing direct comparisons between the ways that advanced industrial economies strategized to bring poor economies and fragile systems in line and the ways that the existing telecommunication regime operates to expand market access. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 then tell the internal story of this impact on the Mubarak regime and detail the ways in which the state apparatus itself was modified and fundamentally altered to accommodate the growth of Egypt's national information infrastructure.
Finally, Chapters 10 and 11 (Part III) draw out the major findings and their relevance to cases like Egypt, of which there are many. The arguments from the final part provide critics and skeptics of popular technologically deterministic perspectives with a complex political-economic framework to question exactly how valuable or sustainable platforms like Facebook or Twitter might be in the future, particularly due to the regulations and cost structures being shaped and enforced by state powers and telecommunications providers both locally and internationally.
From Saleh's perspective, understanding the Egyptian experience requires starting by tracing the strategies of industrialized economies in the 1970s to expand their reach to new markets and customers. Of the several intellectual contributions in this book, Saleh's careful examination of the transformations that have taken place over the past 30 to 40 years in advanced democratic states is perhaps the most important move and will find enthusiastic readership in scholars, students, and critics from development and dependency studies. In the author's causal reading, if we are to understand what forms of agency technologies have given to citizens from developing economies, like Egypt's, it is necessary to understand the tactics and motives of advanced industrial economies from which most of these tools have been designed and developed. Several key debates have already been brewing in global and comparative politics surrounding the regulation of global telecommunications infrastructures, and whether or to what effect changes in regulatory definitions might include the Internet and, in turn, potentially shape its fundamental architecture and usage. With information infrastructures providing new avenues for civil-society groups and democracy promoters to operate, these high-level decision-making bodies do have an impact on the ground level, especially in developing markets and repressive systems.
Third World Citizens tells the important story of actors like the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and telecommunications industry providers from the 1970s onward. Given the most recent stakeholder conflicts at the international level, which were elucidated again most recently in December 2012 at the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, this book is also valuable for unpacking the entry of hitherto unexamined actors like Google, Microsoft, and so on, who have forcefully emerged as important influencers in the struggle to shape international policy frameworks affecting developing and nondemocratic societies.
One of the important refrains present in Saleh's argument is an explicit focus on the limited agency and autonomy of Egyptian citizens—a case that is convincingly applicable to those of other citizens of peripheral states and societies existing at the outskirts of international regime-shaping bodies. This particular aspect of her analysis is especially relevant for the new categories of tech-savvy activists and civil-society groups attempting to speak for and aid indigenous activists and democratization movements when decisions are made to shape technology policy from abroad. Saleh illustrates the ways by which peripheral citizens have been denied opportunities for meaningful input regarding the very information systems that have provided the scaffolding for enabling both economic development and political participation. Internet governance work is often highly technical and mired in legalese, but it is also the subject of critical debate that activists and citizens must pursue to secure their voices and interests, and this investigation is especially useful for outlining the challenges of doing so and why.
Third World Citizens is an important contribution that begins the necessary work of bridging the relationships between the forces and rules enabling globalization and the experiences of citizens and activists who have increasingly used technology infrastructure for political and social change. Skeptics of technology-enabled political transformations are right to criticize popular discourses surrounding Facebook and Twitter revolutions. It does not make much sense to develop theories of democratization or development around singular tools and platforms. The gaps between studies of political mobilization and telecommunication regulation are wide, but they must be bridged. It is precisely at this intersection that the book is most needed and beneficial. Although it does focus primarily on the politics of telecommunications regulation and economic development, it will also be a welcome addition to syllabi and studies of technology-enabled political change in developing economies and repressive regimes.
