Authoritarian surveillance: A corona test

Abstract

As the world seemed undecided in praising China’s crisis management through what was formerly called networked authoritarianism (MacKinnon 2011), countries such as Iran showed no interest in extending its notorious political surveillance practices into the public health arena. Consequently, this paper asks if the umbrella term “authoritarian surveillance” used by many Western and non-Western scholars (including myself) can do justice to the practices witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic in countries such as Iran? Could any act of arbitrary or oppressive surveillance be categorised as authoritarian surveillance? Does authoritarian surveillance necessarily correspond to an authoritarian state form? This paper summarily reviews the political theories of authoritarianism and the current discussions on authoritarian surveillance. By scrutinising Iran’s inability to apply its political surveillance tools during a public health crisis, the paper argues for an analytical integration of other socio-political concepts, such as state legitimacy, and economic potentialities, such as infrastructural capacities, into discussions of authoritarian surveillance. Consequently, the paper proposes a situated understanding of authoritarian surveillance contextualised within social, political, economic, and historical interrelations.