The Internet has played important roles in driving political changes around the world. Why does it help to topple political regimes in some places but improve the quality of governance in others? We found Internet usage in general leads to citizens’ distrust in political institutions. Different political environments, however, can condition such trust-eroding impacts of the Internet in significantly different ways. A democracy enables citizens to connect their online behaviors and offline expression and organization, releasing political discontent while facilitating state–society communication. On the contrary, by restricting various forms of off-line expression, authoritarian regimes drive Internet-active citizens' discontent and distrust to higher levels. We use the World Values Survey data to establish these different mechanisms across democracies and authoritarian systems. Entropy balancing shows our findings to be highly robust.

Protocol 15 inserts a new recital into the Preamble of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) which affirms the primacy of national authorities in securing the effective realization of Convention rights. The article discusses the context for Protocol 15, notably the Brighton Declaration, and the democratic principles it engages. A selective retreat from substantive supranational review towards systemic supranational review in political expression cases may be occurring. The article questions the emerging pattern by which newer and transitional democracies remain subject to strict levels of supranational scrutiny, whilst their more established counterparts look set to be the main beneficiaries.