Preferences and Coalitions in European Union Internet Policy

Abstract

The Internet and digitalisation profoundly shape our societies, economies, and politics. However, while there is a vast literature on Internet politics, i.e., political online communication, and its effects on democracy, political scientists have only started to analyse how democracies regulate the Internet. This is a significant gap because more than just a technical – and technocratic – regulation of a new technology, Internet policy is concerned with the allocation of political and material values in the digital age. By determining what is permissible online, Internet policy sets the legal framework in which Internet politics can unfold and digital markets can prosper. In this cumulative dissertation, I analyse the coalitional politics behind the making of Internet policy and answer the overarching research question: “What are the patterns of political contestation in Internet policy and how can they be explained?” I argue that Internet policy raises both economic questions regarding the appropriate regulation of digital markets and civil rights concerns related to privacy and freedom of expression in a digital society. Therefore, I conceptualise Internet policy as a two-dimensional policy field combining an economic left-right and a socio-cultural libertarian-authoritarian dimension. However, these two dimensions cannot be neatly separated into different policies but are closely entangled. For example, data protection is considered a fundamental right in the EU and thus, clearly a civil rights issue. Personal data, however, is also an important economic asset in the digital economy. Consequently, policy-makers must trade off economic and civil rights considerations when formulating data protection regulations. I argue that this entanglement of civil rights and economic concerns makes Internet policy prone to unconventional political coalitions, for example, when civil society activists and “Big Tech” firms jointly oppose regulations or when leftist and liberal parties form voting coalitions. In this dissertation, I investigate the conditions for and consequences of such “strange bedfellow” coalitions in three empirical studies. Specifically, I focus on the preferences of three types of actors: political parties, civil society groups, and business interest groups. I study the research question in the case of the European Union (EU), which is widely seen as the global front-runner in regulating the digital economy. The investigation period ranges from 1999 until 2019, when Internet policy emerged as an increasingly prominent and controversial policy field on European policy agendas. Study I analyses party competition over Internet policy in the European Parliament (EP) across three legislative periods (1999-2014). Analysing all plenary roll call votes on Internet policy issues over time, I find that Internet policy in the EP has become increasingly contested among pro-EU parties, leading to a decline in grand coalition voting. Ideal point estimation shows that political competition in this policy field is best explained by the ‘libertarian-authoritarian’ dimension. A second, albeit less important, dimension captures attitudes towards European integration. Reinforcing this finding, two short case studies illustrate how civil rights concerns motivate left-wing parties and the liberal party group to form voting coalitions despite diverging economic preferences. My analysis advances the literature on party politics in Internet policy by examining actual parliamentary behaviour in contrast to party manifestos only. Moving from the parliamentary to the societal level, Study II investigates interest group networks in Internet policy. Specifically, it studies under what conditions digital rights groups – NGOs focussed on the rights of Internet users – share policy preferences with Internet businesses. I argue that policy proposals determine preference alignment. Specifically, I theorise that the regulation of Internet intermediaries, such as social media platforms, Internet service providers, or app stores, shapes patterns of interest group contestation: When intermediary regulation seeks to constrain citizens’ online freedoms, the preferences of digital rights groups and intermediary firms align. Conversely, when intermediary regulation aims to limit the discretionary power of intermediaries to empower citizens and intermediary-dependent businesses, the preferences of activists and intermediaries diverge. I test and find support for this argument by conducting a discourse network analysis of four EU stakeholder consultations in the areas of data protection, online content, and Internet traffic management. The results contribute to our understanding of lobbyism and activism in digital capitalism. Study III investigates the political consequences of such “heterogeneous lobbying coalitions” between digital rights groups and Internet businesses by zooming into one highly politicised case, the adoption of the 2019 EU Copyright Directive in the EP. Recent studies show that when salience is high, heterogeneous lobbying coalitions are more successful in achieving their lobbying objectives than homogeneous coalitions. However, in the copyright case, an alliance of activists and “Big Tech” firms failed to prevent policy change despite mobilising sizable public protests. I argue that proponents of the policy change – namely publishers from the music, film, and press industries and their party political allies – successfully undermined the lobbying coalition by invoking notions of “digital sovereignty” and delegitimising activists as Silicon Valley’s “useful idiots”. Combining a process-tracing analysis of the lobbying competition and a content analysis of EP plenary debates, I show how legislators employed delegitimation and sovereignty claims to justify their non-responsiveness to civil society opposition and public protests. This finding contributes to the growing debate about the notion of “digital sovereignty” by demonstrating its strategic use in the policy-making process. In sum, the three studies advance our understanding of the political cleavages shaping digital capitalism. I provide a detailed picture of how parties, civil society, and business interest groups cooperate and compete over the rules and regulations that shape our digital society. This dissertation thus advances (I) the so far scarce research on political parties in Internet policy, and (II) the literature on (heterogeneous) interest group coalitions and their lobbying success.