Protecting Democracy in the Digital Era

At the dawn of 2025, liberal democracy is faced with a considerable challenge: Big Tech bosses appear to leverage their market power for far-reaching political influence, without any democratic legitimisation to do so. As someone working on issues of market power in the digital economy, one cannot help but wonder: shouldn’t competition law be able to contain (some of) this unseeming wielding of market power?

Before delving into competition law’s possible contribution to tackling the anti-democratic wielding of Big Tech market power, a caveat is in order: competition law can certainly contribute to protecting democracy in the digital era, but it can only do so in addition to more targeted laws and regulations.

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