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Does IT ODA Promote Democracy in Developing Countries? : A challenge to optimistic technological determinism

HYOJIN Song 1

1서울시립대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This research has a purpose to verify whether the Internet diffusion through the Official Development Assistance (ODA) can bring about democratic changes in authoritarian political system of developing countries. This research has found out that IT ODA has‘ positive(+)’effect on the Internet diffusion in recipient countries. It seems to support the expectation of donor countries that they can lead the political democratization by constructing infrastructure and promoting the use of the Internet. However, as the impact of IT ODA on the Internet diffusion is not considerable as well as the Internet diffusion has no strong influence on the development of democracy in developing countries, and also each of these aspects of countries looks different, it is hard to see that the democratization hypothesis based on the optimistic technological determinism is reasonable. Therefore, this paper argues that IT ODA must be based on not blind optimism that IT transfer will lead to the political democratization in developing countries, but the social structuralism which is based on distinctiveness and uniqueness of countries. and suggests that the discuss of the effect of IT ODA proceed with the constructive way.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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