Online privacy protection: How the varieties of democracy matter

Abstract Digital technologies have enabled the gathering, storing, and processing of large amounts of data in increasing and unprecedented ways. This has triggered concerns regarding governments’ ability to harvest vast amounts of information on citizens and the consequences of this surveillance on democracy. The reliance of many democracies on digital (surveillance) technologies in response to the 2019 Coronavirus pandemic has amplified these concerns. While most studies focus on how privacy violations affect democracy, this study analyzes how variations in democracy affect the legal protection of citizens’ rights. We rely on data from the varieties of democracy to capture this variation and on data from the Digital Society Project to measure variations in online privacy protection laws. Our results point to a complex and partially unexpected relationship between democracy, its different dimensions, and online privacy protection laws in democratic regimes. The quality of democracy is positively associated with protective online privacy laws in typical times, but changes in democratic quality in the years preceding the pandemic did not affect changes in online privacy laws during the pandemic. However, the relationship between the different dimensions of democracy and privacy laws is more complex, and our results show that egalitarianism and participation are more important than liberalism in protecting online privacy laws. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance of these results to policy.