Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marcus Mayers, Visiting Research Fellow, Manchester Metropolitan University

The UK government says it has learned valuable lessons from the expense, delays and political embarrassment of HS2. And now it has laid out detailed plans for train passengers in northern England who have been so badly “let down” in the past.

Northern Powerhouse Rail will apparently bring new and upgraded routes from east to west of the region, linking Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and Hull. Major capacity and journey time improvements have been promised.

Away from the actual tracks though, the scheme could come to represent a welcome change in the direction of travel for public transport more generally.

Funding for example, will follow a new hybrid model – with central government retaining overall control but with local authorities also contributing through devolved transport budgets and regional investment plans.

Delivery of the project will also involve a large amount of collaboration between the London-based Department for Transport (DfT) and politicians in the north of England. This could signal a welcome political commitment to a nationally significant scheme being shaped through regional collaboration.

But it could also prove to be quite a test for a government department that is often criticised for being too centralised and overly complex. So is the DfT ready to implement a genuinely devolved transport system?

As it is, the department has a fairly broad range of responsibility. Apart from railways, it covers roads and local transport, maritime issues and security, and decarbonisation and technology.

Over the years, each of these areas within the department has developed close relationships with the industries they oversee. And while such collaboration can be beneficial, it also risks creating a revolving door between government and industry.

This can distract from the fundamental objective of delivering an efficient transport system, as decisions are made which benefit industries rather than the travelling public.

Moving forward

An alternative approach for the department would be to redefine transport outputs more clearly in terms of social or economic value. After all, if journeys do not create value, why are they being made?

The department could then be reorganised to focus on specific demands and needs rather than particular modes of transport. There could be a section focused on commuting and local travel for example, with another specialising in intercity travel, and another devoted to international passengers.

For instance, suppose there is a departmental goal to support 150,000 business meetings and 150,000 social interactions each day between Manchester and Birmingham. A broad mix of tactics to achieve this might include high-speed rail, intercity coaches, private car travel and digital connectivity through virtual meetings.

Some devolved regions are already experimenting with this kind of demand-based approach. Manchester’s “Bee network” initiative – the first mayoral authority to take buses back from commercial operators – is one example.

What is certain is that the DfT must adapt if it is to serve the UK population effectively, especially as regional powers grow and digital technology continues to reshape how people connect.

As the transport pioneer Henry Ford observed: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

New links

The challenge for the UK government, beyond a plan to improve rail travel in northern England, is to configure the DfT’s resources in a way that ensures both physical and digital transport are fit to support the people and economy of the UK.

Northern Powerhouse Rail therefore becomes a test not just of investment ambition, but of institutional and operational design. Had the DfT been organised more clearly around outcomes or needs (rather than modes of transport), a more integrated set of solutions might have emerged sooner, combining rail, road and digital connectivity as a single system.

Even so, the programme signals a long overdue and welcome shift in direction. By forcing new ways of working between Whitehall and the regions, it creates the conditions for a more integrated approach to transport over time.

If the department is willing to learn from this experiment in devolution, Northern Powerhouse Rail could mark not just a new railway for the north, but the beginning of a more adaptive and effective transport system across the whole of England.

Marcus Mayers receives is a transport advisor to the MP JJulia Buckley.

David Bamford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Northern England’s rail upgrade could signal change in direction fo public transport – https://theconversation.com/northern-englands-rail-upgrade-could-signal-change-in-direction-fo-public-transport-273516

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Woods, Professor of Human Geography, Aberystwyth University

Wales prides itself in being a pioneer in environmental policy. It was the first country in the world to adopt a statutory duty for public bodies to make development sustainable, in 2015. Yet, environmental issues have rarely featured prominently in elections to the Senedd (the Welsh parliament).

This year is different. Wales votes for a new Senedd in May and parties are using contentious statements around environmental issues to differentiate themselves. Issues including windfarms, expansion of pylons and support for farmers are already starting to be fiercely debated.

For the first time, Reform UK is a major player in Welsh politics, and is using the urban-rural divide as part of its messaging. Recent polling has been suggesting that Senedd control could be a close fought battle between Reform and Plaid Cymru, a centre-left Welsh nationalist party.

But one new poll by YouGov for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University has just suggested Plaid is now pulling ahead, up seven percentage points since September. Analysis suggests this could be most significant election in Wales for 100 years, with a major shift away from Labour.

The Senedd has been led by a Labour government since its creation in 1999, when it was known as the National Assembly. Labour has traditionally held the vote in the urban areas of Wales, while the less populated rural areas historically voted Conservative, Liberal or Plaid.

Farming and the environment

One big issue that shows how the campaign battle is unfolding is around the Welsh government’s new sustainable farming scheme (SFS). Designed as a post-Brexit replacement for the common agricultural policy (which provided support for UK farmers when the UK was an EU member), the SFS ties financial assistance for farmers more strongly to environmental objectives than the EU assistance did.

The original plans proposed that farmers would be required to plant 10% of their land with trees to qualify for support. The proposal provoked vociferous opposition from farmers, who feared that the viability of small farms would be threatened, with several protests across Wales. Over half of farms in Wales are small, under 20 hectares, and typically operate on tight margins.

On average, farms in Wales are the least profitable of farms in the four UK nations. The average farm income for all farm types in Wales was £34,300 in 2021. This compared to £34,402 in Northern Ireland, £39,347 in Scotland and £51,900 in England.

Read more:
Farmers and supermarkets worry that extreme weather will stop food getting to consumers – here’s what needs to change

While the Welsh government backed down and moderated the SFS requirements, the episode has reinforced a perception that Labour doesn’t understand the countryside. The perception has been both stoked and exploited by opposition parties, notably Reform UK, which is targeting Welsh farmers for support.

Reform leader Nigel Farage attracted large crowds when he appeared at the Royal Welsh Show in July 2025 and used a rally in Llandudno in November to attack Labour’s agricultural and environmental policies. Reform’s strategy in Wales is primarily aimed at converting voters from the Conservatives, who have also been vocal critics of the SFS, but rural discontent with Labour could threaten First Minister Eluned Morgan’s chances of re-election in the rural Ceredigion Penfro constituency.

Reform’s messaging to Welsh farmers includes statements opposing mass tree planting and rewilding and backing livestock farming. These positions refer to wider debates in Wales around the contribution of livestock farming to climate change as well as different approaches to land management and food production.

Protesting pylons

Among the most contentious issues is the conversion of land in Wales for renewable energy generation. According to the Campaign to Protect Rural Wales there were over 50 planned onshore windfarm projects in early 2025, many accompanied by local opposition.

Campaign groups are also protesting against plans for new lines of pylons to connect windfarms in upland Wales with urban centres, especially in Powys and Carmarthenshire. Both the Conservatives and Reform UK have backed pylon campaigners but opposition is not limited to those parties.

Plaid has also outlined some opposition to pylon projects, favouring more expensive underground cabling. This position, along with alignment with farmers on the SFS, reflects the importance of rural areas as heartlands for the party.

Yet, some commentators argue that there is a contradiction between these stances and Plaid Cymru’s strong green rhetoric on climate change, that could be targeted by a Labour party willing to defend its policies as necessary pro-climate actions.

Rivers and roads

Several other locally significant issues have potential to be amplified nationally in the campaign. Pollution of the River Wye, which runs along the Welsh-English border, from intensive poultry units helped the Greens to win North Herefordshire across the border in the 2024 UK general election.

It is also a concern in the Senedd constituencies through which it runs, Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd and Sir Fynwy Torfaen. The former is the top target for the Liberal Democrats, who campaigned on water quality in Brecon, Radnor and Cwmtawe during the UK election in 2024.

The long-running issue of the Newport relief road could also be resurrected by parties seeking to advocate a pro-motorist platform. Plans to relieve congestion on the M4 by building a new motorway through the Gwent Levels split the Labour party and were cancelled in 2019 as incompatible with Wales’s sustainable development commitments.

The rise of the Greens

One factor that could help to further propel environment issues to prominence is increased support for the Green party in Wales. The January YouGov poll put the Greens ahead of Labour, in third place on 13%. If that polling trend holds, the Greens could have a decisive role in the formation of the next administration.

The Greens are in competition with Plaid for disaffected Labour voters, but with their key targets in urban south Wales they are less beholden to appeasing rural voters. As such, emphasising more radical positions on agriculture, renewable energy, and river pollution could help to differentiate the Greens from Plaid and set up potential wins in post-election negotiations between the parties.

In May environment issues are likely to play a bigger part in shaping the outcome of the election in Wales than they ever have done before.

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Michael Woods receives funding from UKRI. He is a member of the Liberal Democrats.

– ref. Environment issues have never been so fiercely debated in a Welsh election campaign as they will be in 2026 – https://theconversation.com/environment-issues-have-never-been-so-fiercely-debated-in-a-welsh-election-campaign-as-they-will-be-in-2026-273161

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anton Roberts, Sociologist and Social Policy Researcher at the Policy Evaluation and Researcher Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester Metropolitan University

The government’s recently announced grand plan to end homelessness in England is the latest instalment in a long line of promises (and failures) by governments across the UK. This latest strategy, published in December, promises billions in investment in rough sleeping services, alongside a previous commitment to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament.

It’s an attempt to address the UK’s acute housing crisis. On the surface, there is plenty to praise in the plan, and these proposals are already receiving support from the wider sector.

For example, the scrapping of the two-child benefit limit will lift many vulnerable children out of poverty. And the strategy hints at more preventative approaches to the problem of homelessness.

But there’s a problem. Can the government achieve this objective within the narrow political window that this parliament offers? If not, perhaps it should consider whether this is the most effective use of public money.

One striking omission in the strategy is the absence of a commitment to the “housing first” model which, as the name suggests, would provide immediate access to housing for a homeless person. This omission is surprising, given the report’s repeated emphasis on housing as a solution.

Housing first combines an unconditional home with range of wraparound services for things like mental health problems or addiction. It’s distinct in being a genuinely long-term housing intervention, catering to those with multiple and complex needs. It is one of the most robustly evidenced homelessness interventions.

There are some isolated case studies of housing first mentioned in the report, but responsibility once again falls to the third sector. Charitable organisations are already forced to compete for insufficent funding pots, while also working alongside cash-strapped local authorities.

The average cost of housing first support per person is highly economical, according to the government’s own cost-and-benefit analysis data. The expected benefits to society have been calculated at £15,880 per person, which is more than double the £7,737 average cost.

According to a recent report from the charity Crisis evaluating housing first trials, a national roll out would cost £226 million per year. But this would be offset by reductions in provision burdens, equivalent to £280 million per year. This equates to total cost of £17,068 per individual per year, with a related saving surplus of £3,313.

The false economy of ‘business as usual’

Moral and human costs aside, homelessness is astoundingly expensive. Temporary accommodation alone costs billions each year. Although exact data on this is sparse, people experiencing rough sleeping are often referred to as “frequent flyers” through public services such as A&E departments, police and the courts.

The most recent calculation from Crisis, which goes back to 2015, estimated the annual cost of rough sleeping to be around £20,000 per person (or £27,872 when adjusted for inflation). This is due to things like use of NHS services, policing and the courts system. As seen with the government’s own rough sleeping snapshot, it continues to rise in the UK.

Arguably, business as usual isn’t working. There is little point in diverting funding to services that don’t work, or funding housing programmes for people with complex needs who may not be ready for a tenancy. If the aim is to reduce or end homelessness sustainably, the answer is not more short-term funding, but significant structural reform.

In my research with my colleague, Joanne Massey, we explored some of these wider structural constraints facing people in poverty. We framed these constraints as forms of intentional and unintentional harms by the state. They include a welfare system where, despite annual rises, the range of benefits remains out of touch with living costs, alongside things like universal credit sanctions that make already difficult lives even more challenging.

Without confronting these, homelessness cannot be prevented or reduced. As such, the report falls short. For this to be a pragmatic and cost-effective strategy, the system must change from one of economically wasteful short-termism. There is no shortage of impactful and evidence-based examples – including housing first.

However, merely increasing funding will not achieve the necessary changes. The government must also commit to a public health approach. This means prioritising prevention through early intervention, as well as tackling the causes of homelessness at their structural root. Homelessness is a problem for all of society to address.

And merely listing poverty as a cause of homelessness does nothing to address it permanently, nor replace what has been lost from hundreds of billions of pounds of cuts to public services. A public health approach to homelessness would address challenges like these at the individual, community and societal levels simultaneously. It would also be a better use of taxpayer funds.

As an example, efforts in Wales to improve health with a prevention strategy produced a £14 return for every £1 invested using a public health approach. There was an annual saving of £9,266 per person when using preventative homelessness programmes. This approach combines the third sector, council services, education, health and the criminal justice system into one coherent strategy.

The government’s homelessness strategy is a positive start, but it will not replace what has been lost. Nor, as it stands, will it address the complex reasons why homelessness persists.

Anton Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The UK spends millions on services for homeless people. Housing them could make more economic sense – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-spends-millions-on-services-for-homeless-people-housing-them-could-make-more-economic-sense-272569

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

British electoral politics in the 1980s were dominated by Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister for the whole of that decade. Similarly, Tony Blair dominated elections when he was in Downing Street from 1997 to 2007. In sharp contrast, the decade from 2015 to 2025 saw no fewer than six prime ministers come (and mostly go) – five Conservatives and Keir Starmer for Labour.

Traditionally, Labour has been reluctant to sack its leader, but if the May elections turn out to be as bad as the polls suggest, the party might well adopt the Conservative strategy of changing its leader as frequently as premier league football managers.

However, the data suggests that sacking Starmer after those elections would be a mistake. This is because voters focus much more on the performance of the government overall than the prime minister when it comes to casting a ballot.

If he were removed, it would also trigger a serious internal conflict in the party on the scale of the turmoil in the Conservative party over Brexit. This played a major role in explaining the Tories’ massive defeat in the 2024 general election.

Trends in voting intentions, satisfaction with governments and with prime ministers for governing parties, 2015 to 2025:

To see why this is the case, we can examine polling data on perceptions of the performance of incumbent governments and prime ministers alongside data on voting intentions for their parties over the decade since 2015. The key comparison is between the effects of the performance of governments with that of prime ministers on the vote.

The relationship between these variables is very strong, with correlations all greater than 0.80. It is tricky to find out which of the satisfaction measures is most important for predicting the vote, but this can be done with the help of multiple regression. This is a statistical technique that can predict changes in vote intentions from the satisfaction measures together with some other variables which also influence voting for governing parties.

These other variables in the analysis relate to challenger parties affecting both Conservative and Labour governments. The three national challenger parties are Reform, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

In the case of Reform, I’ve included vote intentions for its ancestor parties, UKIP and the Brexit party, since it did not officially exist until 2021. The focus is on explaining voting intentions for the Conservative government from 2015 to 2024 and subsequently the Labour government up to 2025.

The effects of the satisfaction measures and the challenger parties on support for the governing parties appear in the chart below. The analysis identifies the impact of each variable on changes in vote intentions for the governing party.

To illustrate, a score of 1.0 would mean that a 1% increase in the satisfaction with government would produce a 1% increase in voting intentions for the governing party. In fact, the coefficient is 0.2, a lot less than 1.0 but nonetheless highly significant. An increase of 10% in government satisfaction increases government vote intentions by 2%.

Impact of variables on voting intentions for governing parties:

The same cannot be said about the effects of satisfaction with the prime minister. This had a negligible impact on voting for the government. It’s not surprising that polling on the popularity or unpopularity of the prime minister attracts a lot of media attention. After all, they are the main spokesperson for the party. But when it’s time to vote, this evidence shows people judge the government in general rather than the spokesperson.

A clear example of this is the fact that the rapid changes in the leadership of the Conservative party had little overall effect on the party’s support in the long run. They ended up losing terribly in 2024 despite the tendency to replace their leaders.

To be fair, there were exceptions to this, as can be seen in the first chart. After David Cameron resigned following the Brexit referendum his successor, Theresa May, was more popular than her party.

Satisfaction with her government rose, but satisfaction with her performance rose faster. However, she was subsequently brought down by her decision to break a promise and call an early election in 2017.

She nearly lost that election and as a result was unable to get a “soft” Brexit deal through Parliament and had to resign. Boris Johnson did win the 2019 general election, but his chaotic government prepared the ground for the electoral rout for the Conservatives in 2024

The challenger parties

Challenger parties all influence voting for the governing party. The strongest impact is seen in vote intentions for Reform and its ancestor parties. Reform took votes away from both Labour and the Conservatives when each was in government. An increase of 10% in the Reform vote reduces the support for the governing party by 2.5%.

The impact of the Liberal Democrats on the governing party has been negative when they are looked at without considering the complex interactions of voting in a five-party system in England and six-party systems in Scotland and Wales.

These complexities ensured that Liberal Democrat support increased with government support as some voters were drawn to Reform, or when Labour took over as the governing party. Finally, the impact of the Greens on government support was negligible.

These results suggest that a change of leadership in the Labour party will not have any significant effects on vote intentions for the party. The only way to improve things is for Labour to deliver on its manifesto promises, particularly on economic growth and so change the mood of the country.

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

– ref. Data suggests Labour would be making a mistake if it ousted Keir Starmer after May elections – https://theconversation.com/data-suggests-labour-would-be-making-a-mistake-if-it-ousted-keir-starmer-after-may-elections-273048

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neil Dawson, Research Fellow in International Development, University of East Anglia

The success of restoration efforts hinges on involving local communities. That was the finding of our recent study which explored restoration programmes around the world.

From the English fens, where soils are degraded from decades of intensive farming, to the cattle rangelands of the Brazilian state of Rondônia where the Amazon rainforest clearance has been extensive, the best option for nature may not be conservation, but restoration.

Conservation involves preventing harm to existing nature, while restoration is the repair of ecosystems that have degraded over long periods or due to specific events like an oil spill.

Our research found that many restoration projects are run by governments or private organisations with a target-driven focus on planting trees, improving soils or reintroducing species, with limited local input. This often fails to achieve lasting results because of the mismatch with the lives and livelihoods of those most connected to the landscape.

Restoration can more effectively reverse degradation, address its causes and benefit local people if communities can shape and lead initiatives to align with their own needs, knowledge and aspirations.

Restoration programmes are being established around the world at a staggering rate. For example, 196 nations are signatories to a UN target to start restoring 30% of the world’s degraded land and sea by 2030. Worldwide, pledges have already been made to restore over a billion hectares – an area bigger than the US.

This level of ambition is welcome, but there are social and political challenges to be confronted.

Degraded lands and seas are nearly always occupied, most often by farming communities. Some are cherished, like the UK’s much-loved “sheep-wrecked” uplands where high numbers of livestock suppress the diversity of vegetation in many places.

Restoration may sound universally desirable. Who could be against planting lots of trees or restoring fisheries? But people actively resist restoration that’s imposed on them without their involvement. They might experience harms as well as benefits.

In Wales, plans to require farmers to have trees on 10% of their land were dropped after protests. The Scottish government also dropped plans to designate 10% of its seas as highly protected marine areas (areas of the sea where certain activities – usually fishing – are banned), due to a lack of community input and protests.

A promising alternative centres on local communities shaping the restoration process. We have identified four levels of involvement for Indigenous and local communities in ecological restoration: exclusionary (fully imposed), managerial (with limited consultation or incentives), collaborative (a more genuine partnership) and just and transformative (led by local ideas and values).

Four levels of community involvement

With a short-term focus on environmental results such as area of trees planted, exclusionary restoration projects may ignore local perspectives or even displace Indigenous people or local communities with rights to the land.

In Kenya, logging and charcoal production destroyed parts of the Mau forest affecting downstream water supplies. Since 2009, the government has tried to restore the area, but measures included evicting many Indigenous Ogiek who had sought to protect their forest home. Despite a 2017 ruling of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights supporting their ancestral claim, the Ogiek’s struggle continues.

Sometimes locals are invited to consultations or to manage land for nature, but cannot influence decisions. One example of this managerial approach is Vietnam’s 30-year tree planting programme. While tree planting was performed by smallholders, these farmers had little input and many lacked land rights. The focus on growing commercial trees to fell and sell also meant forests were not native and did not mature, so benefits for nature were limited.

In collaborative approaches, a more balanced negotiation means locals may influence what is to be restored as well as where, how, by whom and how any benefits will be allocated. In northern India, forest planting projects have involved both the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department and communities. In some areas, local people selected which tree species would be most suitable for fuelwood and livestock fodder, or have planted trees and monitored their progress.

“Just and transformative” restoration approaches centre around local values, decisions and stewardship. This tends to be more successful for people and nature. The Miawpukek First Nation in Newfoundland, Canada, based restoration around species that are culturally significant to them, like the caribou, blueberries and Labrador tea.

Women in India’s Western Ghats are carefully nurturing the plants, creepers and mosses that hold the forest ecosystem together. And community networks lead mangrove restoration in Thailand’s Phang-Nga Bay.

Restoring the ability of local communities to be the custodians of nature is a promising approach to both ecological and social recovery – and ultimately environmental justice.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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Neil Dawson is affiliated with the Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Adrian Martin receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council

Iokiñe Rodríguez works for the University of East Anglia (UEA). She receives funding from the UK Research Councils.

– ref. Why restoring nature can work so much more effectively when led by local people – https://theconversation.com/why-restoring-nature-can-work-so-much-more-effectively-when-led-by-local-people-272289

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dr Konstantinos Mersinas, Senior Lecturer in Information Security, Royal Holloway, University of London

When a protest by angry traders about what they see as the Islamic Republic’s poor handling of the economy morphed into a national uprising across Iran, the authorities moved quickly to shut down the internet. It’s a tactic the regime has used before. Closing down communications makes it harder for resistance to organise. It also makes it hard for people protesting in Iran to communicate with and enlist support from the outside world.

Authoritarian regimes, such as the Islamic Republic in Iran, tend to rely on two distinct modes for managing information and collective action. The first is surveillance. Communications are monitored, platforms filtered, metadata analysed, and users channelled toward spaces that remain visible to the state. In such conditions, limited circumvention is often tolerated.

The regime allows the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) for example, since only a fraction of the population is technically savvy enough to use them. A VPN is a tool that routes a user’s internet traffic through an external server, masking its destination and bypassing local restrictions. In practice, VPNs can help users evade censorship and reduce visibility to domestic internet controls by making their connections appear to originate from outside the country – though they still depend on the underlying internet infrastructure to function.

The second mode is shutdown, deployed under exceptional conditions. When people start to mobilise and their protests start to exceed the ability of the authorities to control them with surveillance and become visible to the outside world, the authorities escalate from monitoring communications to disrupting them.

Shutdowns are indiscriminate and economically damaging. But they sever the connective infrastructure that allows protest movements to form, share information, coordinate and scale up. Iran’s repeated shutdowns in 2019, 2022, and 2026 illustrate this transition from surveillance as a norm to shutdown as an emergency instrument of rule.

In Iran, shutdowns are implemented in stages rather than a single intervention. Early stages typically involve bandwidth throttling, unstable connections or selective blocking of platforms.

As protests intensify, authorities escalate by disabling mobile data, restricting broadband access and withdrawing routing information that allows Iranian networks to be reached from the global internet. Government directives instruct providers to shut down services and block routes to the outside world. This effectively removes Iran’s digital address from the global network.

In Iran this week, internet traffic monitoring indicates near-total isolation. Connectivity is reported to have fallen to around 1% of normal levels.

Enforcement is neither uniform nor static. Restrictions are reported to be geographically targeted at those neighbourhoods most prone to protest. They tend to be synchronised with mobilisation and are adjusted in real time as required. Communications disruption now extends beyond the internet to include mobile and landline phones and basic digital services. At this point, the objective is to immobilise information flow across the whole of society.

Shutdowns as a political tool

Authorities have repeatedly justified shutdowns as necessary for national security or cybersecurity. Yet analyses indicate such measures as ineffective against state-level cyber operations. What shutdowns primarily restrict is societal access to information and communication, both internally and externally.

The fact that Iran persists with shutdowns despite the often severe economic and humanitarian costs, shows how effective they judge them to be. Each blackout disrupts banking, payments, logistics and everyday life. Yet authorities repeatedly accept these costs when legitimacy risks threaten regime survival. Shutdowns thus function as coercive signals as much as technical means, demonstrating a willingness to suspend digital society itself.

VPNs are widely used in Iran to bypass censorship and surveillance. Research shows that VPN use is often tolerated outside crisis periods, operating as a managed pressure valve while allowing the state to keep an eye on the sort of people who use them. At the same time, VPN traffic is detectable, providers are routinely blocked or throttled, and legal ambiguity enables selective enforcement.

Crucially, VPNs depend on underlying connectivity. Once authorities escalate to disruption on an infrastructure level, VPNs become ineffective because tunnels (encrypted connections that carry internet traffic) cannot be established. This explains why VPN use is significantly reduced when shutdowns are imposed. The same holds for the Tor network (a decentralised system that routes internet traffic through multiple relays to obscure users’ identities and locations). This has been used by Iranians in the past.

Satellite internet, particularly Starlink, enabled limited information flows during recent shutdowns. This allowed some reporting to the outside world. By bypassing domestic infrastructure, satellite connectivity undermines territorial control over data flows – but access remains uneven because connectivity depends on equipment which is scarce, expensive and difficult to distribute discreetly.

Possessing or operating such equipment carries personal risk, particularly during periods of heightened repression. Even when available, connectivity is not guaranteed – satellite links can be degraded andobstructed, and are vulnerable to disruption through signal interference. As a result, satellite internet provides limited, uneven connectivity rather than a reliable substitute.

Shutdown conditions also create fertile ground for social engineering attacks. Fake “Starlink apps” and misleading claims about other circumvention tools can exploit citizens by harvesting data or identifying users.

Shutdowns are rarely the first choice for a regime like the Islamic Republic. They are deployed when mobilisation becomes rapid, visible, and difficult to contain. A recurring feedback loop follows: protesters adapt through VPNs or alternative channels, authorities escalate to infrastructure-level disruption, and this escalation fragments coordination while intensifying perceived injustice.

This explains why shutdowns may suppress mobilisation in the short term yet worsen instability over time. It’s a pattern that was evident across Iran’s previous blackouts.

When they feel under threat, regimes move from monitoring private communication to restricting information flows at scale. This trajectory underscores a broader warning for democracies: the erosion of privacy initiates a shift in power toward the state by normalising control infrastructures that can be activated during crises. This is a dynamic the Iranian case illustrates, manifesting in the disruption of communication itself.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Iran: how the Islamic Republic uses internet shutdowns as a tool of repression – https://theconversation.com/iran-how-the-islamic-republic-uses-internet-shutdowns-as-a-tool-of-repression-273519