The Internet: A new route to good governance

In examining the relationship between Internet use and governance across different regime types, the article emphasizes the Internet's potential to improve governance. Through a pooled time-series analysis of more than 170 countries with annual or biannual data from 1996 to 2010, we establish that countries with higher Internet penetration rates generally enjoy better, more stable governance, regardless of regime type. Our finding has both practical and theoretical implications. More practically, our results strongly entertain the possibility that the Internet improves access to information, accommodates pluralistic sources of information, and produces platforms for political discourse. Our findings also suggest that the Internet's concomitant facility for reporting and scrutiny in the public sphere may encourage leaders to improve transparency and accountability. More empirically, the article introduces an additional variable to the good governance function, which should be included in future analyses.